Interaction Design Education Summit 2016

Formal education is important. But nothing beats the chance to watch and learn from experienced practitioners doing the job well. 

Organisations like the UK's Government Digital Service have introduced work shadowing and apprenticing to help newer practitioners pick up skills and learn ‘how we do it here’. Research shows that watching experts perform tasks helps you move between novice to intermediate and intermediate to expert more effectively than study alone. 

What does it take to establish a successful work shadowing program for your organisation? How about between organisations? We’ll talk about some existing work shadowing programs, examining what works well and what lessons have already been learned. 

This session will tackle questions like: 

- What do you need to set up a shadowing program? 
- Which design and research activities work best for shadowing? and for whom? 
- How can you maximise learning from a shadowing program? 
- How do you encourage participation for both hosts as well as the people shadowing? 
- How might we establish work shadowing between organisations as well as within them? 

By working through these themes together we hope to create a draft framework to share publicly that will give people a head start in setting up their own work shadowing programs.