Online Harvesting Examples

Design challenge:

• People tend to care more about what they have a genuine part in creating. If people are engaged and contributing, actively participating, then what is produced is enhanced by their contributions and their ownership of, investment in, and understanding of that is enriched as well.

• Technology can make co-creating harvest notes in online + hybrid sessions easy. Harvest as you go with live collaboration tools like Miro or Menti, or even the Zoom chat. People can write directly in the online tools, or someone can be a designated note-taker - although try to democratize the ‘harvesting’ process as much as possible; that way one person isn’t determining what is deemed important enough to capture.

• Building in use of tools where people can actively contribute to the harvest also invites different ways of participating; participation is not always verbal. Shy voices might feel more comfortable typing their thoughts on a virtual sticky; or faster brains can make virtual sticky notes while waiting to share airtime with others.

• Always be mindful of any technology access constraints or disability accessibility needs. See my Planning Questions for Choosing Online Tools here, as well as other online collaboration tool resources here.

Approach:

Below are some online harvesting tool examples from my work.

You might notice I use a lot of images from nature, to remind us that we are part of living systems - not mechanistic ones - and our struggles for how to create change takes place in a world that is quite adept at change.

"Images of plants have been shown to dial down stress and our minds are soothed by gentle shifts of colour." – Emma Mitchell  (molecular cell biologist)