This morning, we visited the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. After a short walk from the tram, we walked down a wooden bridge over a large pond into the entrance to the Instituut that was filled with plant and organism samples from the pond outside. After we settled in for our guest speaker, we got to learn about what the Instituut focuses on, how they manage their library, museum and archives departments and some of the current projects they are working on. After we learned a little bit more information about their operations, we split into two groups to tour different parts of the Instituut. Our group headed over to the Sonneveld House, which is a little less than a block from the Instituut.
The Sonneveld House is a preserved house from 1933 with the original furniture, technology and architecture that was built. It was built in the New Bouwen style of architecture, which is considered a part of the modernist movement. The Sonneveld House was one of the most technically advanced homes for its time. It featured lifts for firewood, clocks that were hardwired into the physical home, and surround sound speaker systems for entertaining guests. Much of the furniture and decor game from the Gipsen company and was designed specifically for the Sonneveld family. We were able to listen to audio tours that described what each of the rooms was used for, some specific information about the furniture and decor, and more information about the Sonneveld family.
After we visited the Sonneveld House, we walked back to the Instituut to go explore their interactive exhibits. The exhibits had been developed alongside research fellows focusing on the question of how humans interact with non-human objects and especially focused on aspects of space and time. The space itself was very large and to some degree a little overwhelming with the amount of different interactive stations that were available. One of my favorites was an exhibit that let you select the topic, clip a book of paper down and have a robotic arm write out some kind of message and drawing for you. All of the writing and images, some of which was poetry, was developed with the idea of how humans interact with space and time in mind.
After touring the Instituut, we took a large group out in search of lunch somewhere nearby. We finally settled on a sandwich shop named Tosti, which I have come to understand in Dutch simply means toasted sandwiches. After a very good and much needed sandwich, we made a quick stop for some gelato next door before walking back to the Instituut to have some downtime before we had our class session for the afternoon. We all settled in to have some coffee and water and look at our phones for a few minutes before class started. Personally, I was excited to have one of our class sessions outside of the slightly cramped breakfast room of our hotel. After discussing the Innovation Proposal we will be giving at the end of the program, we moved into presentations on Chapter 7 and 8 of the 10 Faces of Innovation book by Tom Kelley.
Chapter 7 was on the “Experience Architect” which is an innovator type that focuses on creating multi-sensory customer experiences. They mainly focus on mapping out a client’s journey and picking small areas of the experience to concentrate on and improve upon to provide a better experience. One of the key points we identified as a class and as consumers ourselves was the importance of designing an experience that felt authentic. For those of us who went to the Heineken Experience, some of it felt more like a pitch on why you should buy Heineken, rather than an authentic and fun experience learning about their history. This lack of authenticity would be a place that an “Experience Architect” may want to focus on and look for ways to improve these small areas to improve the overall experience.
One of my favorite questions that this group asked was how the “Experience Architect” innovator type falls short and where other innovator personalities might help fill these shortcomings. For me, the first type that came to mind that has a skill set that would compliment the “Experience Architect” well was the “Anthropologist”. Since the “Experience Architect” focuses on creating a multi-sensory experience for clients, the "Anthropologist” could provide feedback about how these clients behave and what their wants and needs are, which would in turn help enrich the experience and the process to improve it. It can be really hard to create a great experience for clients if you have no idea what they want out of an experience in the first place. In the end of the discussion, there seemed to be a consensus among the group that really any of the innovator types would help to compliment the skill set of the “Experience Architect” because you need different types of people with different strengths and weaknesses to really be successful.
The second chapter we discussed was focused on the “Set Designer” innovation personality type. This innovator is really what the name indicates, someone who focuses on the design of physical spaces. They tend to be internally focused on the design of things like work spaces to help facilitate collaboration and innovation. The group who presented this chapter split us up into groups for an activity that allowed us to actually design a physical spaces and everything we would want in it. Our group was assigned an art studio and while some of the objects were trivial like paintbrushes, we spent a lot of our time discussing how we wanted the physical space set up in the room for both individual work and collaborative spaces. Between the four groups, the activity was very helpful in illustrating how challenging it can be to be a “Set Designer”, how many things you need to take into consideration and what things should be prioritized
After a very long day in Rotterdam, we took the train back to Amsterdam for a quick meal before heading off to the Boom Chicago Bar for their comedy show. Carey, one of our program coordinators used to work with some of the people in the Boom Chicago group and was able to get us discounted tickets to their improvised comedy show. We all grabbed a drink at the bar and headed upstairs to the theater to get seated. Little did we know, Boom Chicago is the place where famous comedians like Seth Meyers got their start. The show ended up being hilarious and we were all incredibly impressed since improvised material can be really challenging to work with. They took suggestions from audience members and built their skits and jokes around it. We were even treated to an extra stand-up piece after the show by one of the Boom Chicago cast members. We all headed back to the hotel and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.