Page 180 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

168 Design Meets Business
topics of the meetings, and looked at “ok what is needed here, what is the question here”, because things that had been slated as part of the program were not suitable anymore”.
Based on the negative feedback from their clients before the last work- shop, the creative workers intensified their involvement and helped the still participating teams to progress by for example offering extra tech- nical support and also offering guided mini-workshops in which the teams could participate.
Incorporating people into organizational realities in a renewed state. After the abovementioned workshops, most of the teams could progress and independently developed the prototypes of digital sensors. Most of the teams made use of the facilities offered in Waag’s labs. During the last workshop, at the end of October, Waag’s creative workers put more emphasis on activating clients compared to the previous workshops. In particular, the creative workers invited the teams to present the prototypes they had developed to people from Waag’s wider network and organized a ‘grand finale’ in conjunction with a cultural center in Amsterdam. During these presentations, the teams emphasized how their perspective shifted, and they learned to work with citizens science in tackling urban pollution issues. To place responsibility in the clients’ hands, in the presentations, Waag’s creative workers loosened their involvement by morphing to the role of hosts. This final phase of liminality shows how the creative workers offered the clients the final encouragement to experience liminality. On stage, they were asked to present their insights to wider audiences.
A few months after the project ended, Waag’s ASCL clients reflected on the outcomes. Rather than yielding a specific outcome, the clients noted that engaging with Waag had sparked changes: “I really learned a lot”, they said. One of the clients even wrote a scientific paper on the benefits of citi- zens science in tackling pollution and other societal issues. In interviews, the clients said that they had learned to think from a citizens’ perspective, better understanding of ‘what the public might find more, or less, impor- tant’. Further, they had noticed that Waag’s learning-by-doing approach had helped them to approach their work with more speed and purpose, and “just do it instead of engaging in endless conversations”. In addition to this, the clients mentioned that working with Waag expanded their network as they came into contact with people they normally would not collaborate with. Taken together, these observations show that the clients experienced a transition. In a way, they felt ‘reborn’ and gained renewed perspectives, networks and skills which enabled them to approach problematic situa- tions differently.