Co-Designing & Pursuing Purposeful AI

Facilitator

Everything you need to run the day.

The rehearsal walks the whole 105 minutes on the real screens. The guide and the questions below are readable now, without signing in.

  • 105 minutes
  • 8 blocks
  • 1 password

Controls

Sign in to change what the room sees

One password, shared by every facilitator. It unlocks the controls that move the room: the phase, the vote window, the eighth problem, and the commitment wall.

This gate keeps the controls out of participant view. It does not hide the guide or the rehearsal below, and it is not meant to.

The big screen

One screen the whole room can read

Open this on whatever drives the projector and leave it. It follows the phase you set from the console: the picking wall while people choose their problem and vote on the eighth, then a board showing how far each group has actually got through the two diamonds. There is a manual override on the screen itself if you want to hold a view.

It shows what groups have done, not what they were told to do, so a group that has gone quiet for six minutes during the room blocks is marked. That is the one you walk over to.

Open the venue screen

Rehearsal

Walk the 105 minutes before you run them

Eight blocks, in order, with the screen each one needs. Open the screens on your own phone as you read, so the first time you use the software is not in front of sixty people.

Start here See one group's finished run A different problem from the eight on the slate, worked end to end: notes, statements, the gate, and a commitment. Read it once before you walk the blocks below, so you know the shape you are steering eight groups toward.

What you say is still to come. The words you say in each block are still to come. Bradley records the agenda script, and this page fills with it. Everything else on this page works now.

  1. 01 0:00–0:10 AI off

    Design-thinking refresher

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Phones down. Nobody has opened the site yet.
    Watch for
    Nothing to run, so the risk is starting late. The 105 minutes are fixed and every minute lost here comes out of the solution diamond.
  2. 02 0:10–0:22 AI off

    Open & rally

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Scanning the QR code, reading the consent notice, entering a name, and picking a problem.
    Watch for
    This is the only block with slack, so it is where the network gets used. Ask everyone to scan now, even if they are not ready to pick. A group that first loads the site at 0:22 has no cached copy when the room is busiest.

    Open the event landing

  3. 03 0:22–0:42 AI light

    Diverge · problem

    Cards 1, 2 lead · 3, 4 support

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Talking first, then running the lead cards one at a time and reading results aloud.
    Watch for
    The failure is running both lead cards back to back without discussing either. One prompt, read aloud, then talk. Support cards are for a group that stalls or finishes early, and the screen says so.

    Open a group workspace

  4. 04 0:42–0:52 AI active

    Converge · problem

    Cards 5, then 6

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Consolidating notes, choosing one statement, then putting it through the four-lens gate.
    Watch for
    Ten minutes for two cards is the tightest box in the day. If a group is still drafting at the halfway mark, tell them to pick the closest statement and let the gate sharpen it. The gate is what catches a vague statement, so protect its time.

    Open a group workspace

  5. 05 0:52–1:14 AI light

    Diverge · solution

    Cards 7, 8 lead · 9, 10 support

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Ideating without devices first, then running the lead cards against their statement.
    Watch for
    Watch for finished-looking concepts. The cards ask for provocations, and a group that starts designing has stopped diverging. The dial returns to light here, which surprises people who expect it to keep climbing.

    Open a group workspace

  6. 06 1:14–1:24 AI active

    Converge · solution

    Cards 11, then 12

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Clustering ideas into directions, choosing one, then the final gate.
    Watch for
    If any gate answer would embarrass the pair in twelve months, they keep refining. Say that out loud. This is the last moment the software can help them.

    Open a group workspace

  7. 07 1:24–1:42 AI dark

    Commit

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Devices down. The screen goes dark, the prompts leave, and the pair writes the commitment by hand before entering it.
    Watch for
    The dark screen is the point, so do not talk over it. A group may write more than one commitment, and the same person may appear on several. Nobody has to be on one.
  8. 08 1:42–1:45 AI off

    Close

    You say
    Pending the agenda script.
    The group is
    Watching the commitment wall fill as you reveal it.
    Watch for
    Open the wall from the facilitator controls, not before. Reading two or three aloud does more than scrolling all of them.

    Open the commitment wall

Guide

Five things that decide how the day goes

Arrive with the deck already loaded

Open the site on your own phone before the room fills and walk to your group with it loaded. The site caches itself after the first visit, so a device that has been used once keeps working when the venue network does not.

Carry the printed run map as well. Every card works as a spoken question with no device at all, and that is the designed fallback rather than a failure.

One AI Steward per group, and only one

Ask each group to name one person to run the prompts. That person runs at most one prompt at a time and reads every result aloud.

This is not a convenience. Groups where several people paste into their own assistants converge on the same answers, which is the outcome the whole workshop is built to avoid.

Call the dial, because the software will not

The site shows which state the dial is in, but it never advances on its own. There is no timer and no countdown anywhere in the product. You call every block.

The dial is not a climb. It returns from active to light between the two diamonds, and it goes dark once, at the commitment, and stays there.

Four things to hold, whatever else happens

Facilitate, do not solve. The moment you supply the answer, the group stops owning it.

Every voice contributes. The quietest person at a group usually holds the objection worth hearing.

Guard against the crutch. If a group asks the assistant whether their idea is good, remind them of the fifth house rule: it will say yes.

Keep the time boxes. Ten minutes means ten minutes, and the converge blocks are where a slipped schedule does the most damage.

When something breaks

The network fails: ask the front-side question aloud. Every card is a discussion prompt first, and the group loses nothing structural.

A prompt returns the wrong shape, four items instead of five: ask for exactly five. The card text is fixed and does not need editing.

An assistant refuses or stalls: move to the spoken question and come back. Do not spend a time box debugging a tool.

A group is stuck on the statement: hand them the closest candidate and let the gate do the sharpening.

Questions

What facilitators ask

Running the day

Do I need to log in?

You need the facilitator password for the controls that change the room: the phase, the vote window, promoting the eighth problem, and revealing the commitments. Everything else on this page is readable without it.

What do participants have to do to get in?

Scan the code, read the consent notice, type a name. There is no account, no password, and no email. The name they type is the name everyone sees.

Who controls what the room sees?

You do. The phase control moves everyone forward together, and the site follows you. It never advances by itself.

What happens if I advance the phase too early?

Nothing breaks. The phase marks which card is live and nudges people to the right screen; it does not lock anything. Move it back if you need to.

The eighth problem

How does the wildcard become a real problem?

People who pick "something else" write what they would rather work on. You open a five-minute discussion, the room argues it out loud, then you open the vote. The idea with the most votes becomes the eighth problem.

Is the vote binding?

It records where the room landed. You promote the winning idea, and that writes it into the eighth group as their problem line. The buttons follow the conversation rather than replacing it.

What if nobody picks the wildcard?

Then there are seven groups and you skip the alignment. Nothing else changes.

The AI in the room

Which assistant should groups use?

Whichever one they already have open. The prompts were written to run in one turn on a free consumer assistant on a phone, and were evaluated that way.

Does the site send anything to an AI?

No. It hands the group a prompt to copy. It has no model behind it and sends nothing anywhere.

Can we change the card wording?

No. The twelve cards were evaluated across 49 runs, and a changed card is an unevaluated card. If a card is wrong, note it and it goes back through the evaluation loop after the event.

What if a group asks the assistant to pick the best idea?

Remind them of the fifth house rule. Assistants trained on human feedback tell you what you want to hear, which is why no card ever asks for a verdict and why the gate asks questions instead.

Commitments

Can a group make more than one commitment?

Yes, as many as they have pairs for. The same person may appear on several, and nobody is required to be on one.

Can a commitment be taken back?

A group can withdraw its own, and it disappears from the wall. Withdrawing asks for confirmation first.

When does the room see the wall?

When you reveal it. Before that, each group sees only its own.