Engage me, do! : engagement catalysers to ignite a (design) conversation

This paper reflects on the possibilities of embodiment and skilful coping to connect people and to catalyse a constructive (design) "conversation" among people with different backgrounds, during transformative collaboration. We do this by illustrating the process and results of a two-weeks design class with Master students at the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology. The resulting Engagement Catalyser is a creative tool to engaging people in a (design) discussion more concrete and effective than a discussion or brainstorm session held around a table. The six developed Engagement Catalysers have been used and evaluated in two workshops, in which participants from very different cultural and professional background have used them as a means to engage quickly and ignite the design process. The results show that the Catalysers stimulate engagement, help people to get familiar and connected in a short period of time, and seem to inspire and boost the design process.