A Pressure Cooker Full of Roman WOW-Factor
Author: Harry Lindelauf
Photography: Anja Neskens en Submedia
Assignment 1: surprise visitors of the Via Belgica in a playful way.
Assignment 2: tell the Roman heritage of the region more effectively.
The participants: 21 archaeologists, entrepreneurs, policy officers, marketers, and designers.
This diverse group put a pressure cooker on the stove at the end of 2023. For three days, they worked in the “kitchen” of the Brightlands Campus in Heerlen, following the precise recipe and strict guidance of the “chefs” from The Nextlab. The commissioners of this design sprint (its official title) were the Via Belgica project and five individual municipalities.
The starting point was the observation that many (walking) visitors of the Via Belgica are enthusiastic about the South Limburg landscape, but that there is a strong desire for more Roman experience.
Via Belgica decided to focus these improvements particularly on families with children and on people aged 55 and older.
The design sprint followed five steps: understand, ideate, decide, prototype, and test.
Where a brainstorming session usually ends, the design sprint continues — right up to a concept sketch and even a first rough estimate of the budget needed to realise an idea.
Taking Children into Account
Remarkable was the step of presenting the first design sketches to families and their children as well as to people aged 55+ for evaluation.
It had already been anticipated that the needs of these target groups would differ. But the testing phase made it crystal clear: it is essential to take the needs and experiences of children into account.
The advice is that the visual, auditory, and textual development of ideas should be thoroughly adapted to engage the younger audience.
