Sparking Curiosity at Work
Client: Google
Services: Culture Design, Program Design
Challenge: How can we spark active curiosity in the workplace?
Team: Curiosity Atlas – Me: Experience Design, Gretchen: Facilitation & Client relations, Shana: Graphics
Curiosity is the precursor to creativity.
Google needed a track for creativity and innovation as part of their employee development program. Creativity and innovation benefit from cultivating various mindsets. We set out to create a curriculum to gently exercise participant’s mindsets to increase their ability to embrace and explore creative opportunities when they arise.
Much like Steve Jobs, it is our belief creativity is rooted in making unlikely connections. But first, you must have a mental library of ideas to connect. How do you build that library? Curiosity of course. Unfortunately, most adults have allowed their curiosity to atrophy since childhood. To help spark that love of wonder, we first developed a framework of curious habits.
The behaviors framework served as a map of the 7-week employee journey. Each mindset or behavior would push the employee, slightly expanding their comfort zone and serving to disrupt their routines. In doing so, they would become more attentive to their surroundings and new inputs they could draw on to make new connections. At the end of the track, participants would have a series of behaviors to continue practicing in their lives and work.
For every behavior, we created a unique activity participants could easily incorporate into their day.
Each activity was founded in research…
could be completed in a few simple steps…
and included sharing their personal insights with their cohort for a sense of connection.
As the program progressed, activities shifted to incorporate lessons into their work…
so they could immediately understand the curriculum’s practical applications.
Since designing the curriculum for Google, we have successfully implemented the employee development program for Oakland Public Library, YouTube, and adapted it into a customer experience journey for Princess Cruise Lines to help vacationers find more connection with the local cultures they encounter.