I run a digital platform with a focus on urban planning where people can construct creative ideas together. We are working on 3D models of the city. City models are generally constructed from above, the eye of God or a king, but ours are at eye level so people who don’t generally get to participate in urban planning can reimagine it and be a part of their city. 

At the Techlab, I began with meeting Titta, a service designer who helped enormously with the structure to build up our business plans. It began with an in-depth questionnaire wanting to know every step of our organisation and our process. It was necessary to fill out all the forms and tables, to learn the vocabulary, to understand who your stakeholders are. For me, this was the most important part, the design brief. 

We had to create a value proposition, which is a statement explaining what we did, who it served and in what way. We started out with a very artistic perspective which changed during the process. In every meeting with different people, a running theme was finding the essence of our project. We had to describe what we did repeatedly and with different perspectives; that of the customer, that of the business that may want to give us money. Every time we repeated this, we were encouraged to simplify, to use simple words, to be as clear as possible. Ultimately, we wrote a letter to potential sponsors with our new vocabulary and understanding of our services. 

I really liked the Techlab programme, there was an atmosphere of trust, the consultants were great and well-matched to our work and our conversations ranged from the entirely practical to the more philosophical. At the beginning, the way in which I talked about my work was incredibly complex, and now I can break it down to make it easy to understand for a variety of different listeners.