Stage 8: ready to wear
This stage comprises freshly laundered next steps; an exercise to shake out the whole experience, get it down to an ‘elevator pitch’ (or should that be a capsule wardrobe?)
The point is to articulate where the project is, and vitally, to distill and summarise next steps, so the participants feel that they have a plan when they leave.
What is ‘freshly laundered next steps’?
Having just done a deep dive into the details in stage 7: hanging out to get it done priorities washing line 7 this stage brings it back to the summary level. How can you articulate very clearly what the project is? The zine workbook puts it like this:
All being well, you’re feeling fresh, bright and confident now. You should be able to spin the answers to these things off at 1200rpm:
- What is the project called?
- Who is the target?
- Where will it take place?
- What resources/people do you need to make it happen?
- Why is it important?
- What are the key messages?
- How will you evaluate?
That covers the broad-brush macro-pitch, and then the participants fill in ‘the three tangible next steps you’re going to take to move forward’.
Next steps are written on ‘freshly laundered ’ garments, from zine page 47
Why?
The laundromat process does quite a few iterative loops, and ‘divergent’ opening and broadening, then ‘convergent’ deepening and honing in on details. The point is to look at the engagement and the participant’s position in it from slightly different viewpoints in order to rinse out different aspects. Sometimes, that leaves participants feeling discombobulated: they may have thought that they had a handle on what they were doing and why, but the process has shifted some dirt and they can feel unsure, especially around stages 4 and 5. This final exercise is to help people feel on top of it all and purposeful. If stage 7 covers the longer-term plan in detail, this exercise is a quick distillation, and the ‘note to self’ you need when you get back to the office the following Monday and need a quick recap to catalyse momentum.
Presenting the next steps using the washing machine side
Finally, there is also a flip-back to the survey by asking how they feel about their understanding, experience, confidence, and motivation regarding their scicomm/engagement:
Final self-evaluation/reflection from page 48 of the zine workbook
The zine workbook asks:
What’s changed, if anything? Take a moment to compare these answers to the ones you gave at the start of this process. Has anything changed? If so, in what way?
This can be a talking point in a sum-up session or something useful to capture for your own evaluation or follow-up with participants later.
How does it work?
Participants document the answers on the side of the washing machine, and in their zine workbooks. The washing machine side becomes a final ‘feed back and present’ canvas. This exercise can be run very quickly, or you can give it as a task running on from stage 7 and let the two blur together. For instance, brief participants in the afternoon when they are working on stage 7 that they will share this side of the washing machine with the group in a final session mid-morning the following day.
Suggestions for next steps
If you think you might like to follow up with participants in the following week(s), take photos or record their three tangible steps so you can ask if they were completed later, and document their final self-evaluation/reflection to see if what they said still holds true once they are back to ‘normal life’.
We have also made and sometimes used a version of the three next steps that can be given as a note-to-future-self card for the participants to fill in and put in an envelope that we then send six weeks later so that they get a prompt to revisit the laundromat. This is included in the resources section.
The front/back cover and inside of the note-to-self card
Downloads
Head to the resources section
Freshly laundered next steps is on zine workbook page 46–47 and the self-evaluation questions are on page 48.