Parallel scribing to find similarities

Context
The Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS in Pavia developed and organized three days of multidisciplinary event for the PHD in Sustainable Development and Climate Change students of the institute. The purpose was to establish connections between the subjects of study and the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations). A time to build a dialogue between different classes that do not usually have the opportunity to listen to each other and share ideas.

Process
The objective was to encourage young researchers, through a combination of plenary sessions and work groups, to search for similarities and things in common among the various ongoing research projects. To facilitate the understanding of complex scientific messages and make them accessible even to non-experts they decided to use a visual language in order to build a common ground.

Solution
Housatonic supported, in parallel, the work of five different groups of students and synthetized the outcome through a series of visualizations that the speakers used in the final presentation of their work. During the three-day event we created a big Knowledge Wall in which we have collected and merged the pillars of the plenary presentations, a way to inspire and highlight the valuable work of the student researchers.