If you are working on a design project where you wish to integrate circular strategies, this exercise from The Circular Design Guide is interesting to work on in terms of the benefits to the planet and to the user (and to check if your ideas are truly circular.)

You will need an hour for your students or staff to work on this project. You can use the examples at the top of the page, or your own project. I would suggest groups of no more than 5.

Your participants have to work through each section using a timer for each part.

For the first part, you can choose one member of each team to be the User with the others quetioning them.

For the second part, you can use Circular Strategy cards to help your team members. See below for some examples.

For the 3rd part, the Design Area, you can use a piece of paper for each participant for them to sketch their ideas and name them. This is important, make sure sketches and ideas are developed.

For the 4th part, the Design Rationale 15 minutes is allocated.

There are 2 ways to do this part, depending on the number of people in a team. If it’s a lower number than 5, discussions can be held as a group and comments added to each section by one group member.

Otherwise, each person can exchange their piece of paper with another person in the team for 3 minutes and then it passes to another person – everyone has to comment on each others ideas. They can add their comments to their colleagues ideas on the same paper. A little like Brain Sketching.

At the end of the exercise, each team can evaluate the ideas to take ahead.

This is just my way of doing things based on the sessions I have held using the exercise. It’s always worked well but of course, depending on your needs in class or at your office, it can be adapted as you wish.