Customer feedback

“I started out really sceptical, thinking what can these things in the bag really do in a workshop, but once the group I was facilitating with got going, I was convinced. This really produced great results, and the group dynamics were great. People were really thinking things through and developing a sophisticated idea in a very short period of time. You couldn’t test this at a higher level than the Enterprisers training – some of the best minds in enterprise planning from MIT and Universities across the UK, as well as the brightest PhD and Masters students in the UK, and Thinkit performed really well.” (Max Robinson Enterprise Education Director at Durham University)
“There was none of that big felt tip and a flip chart piece of paper stuff that drives you demented and drives everybody else demented as well, writing big lists of things that you then talk about one by one and people fall asleep and then you throw the piece of paper away. There was none of that, it was much better.” (Hilary Wood, Environmental Education Warden at Mersey Valley, and participant in Irk Valley envisioning workshops in 2003)
 “I like the idea of ‘putting the pens in the hands of the residents,’ because normally the way that we work is, the landscape architects make the plan, and we take it back to the residents. With this, the residents sat around the table discussing amongst themselves where they think things should be placed on the map. I think it made a big difference in the final plan. I could see people looking at it and saying “That is what I suggested and I thought it should go there”. I thought that was really, really exciting.” (feedback from participant in Irk Valley planning from GroundWork Manchester)
“Discussion groups as the method of recording ideas (labels on felt) was very stimulating for the discussion.  Far better than just pen and paper.” (On feedback form from participant on Regional Stakeholder workshop for the Environment Agency, June 2004)
"Thinkit allowed you to focus your thinking, often traditional group mind mapping can lack structure. The way this gave different stages to types of thinking meant you were not attempting to tackle everything at once, but instead you had a very logical path to follow." (Michael Soppitt, Masters Student in Human Centered Computer Systems at the University of Susex)
“A lot of people are like me, and they are not good at speaking if there are more than 2 or 3 people around, but they have things to say. It’s like a classroom at school, you get the people who say things but that doesn't mean to say that everyone else doesn't want to say things, but they can’t because they know that they are not the cleverest and they might get laughed at. So they don't really participate. So this is magnificent at getting people to participate, and very important.” (Irk Valley Resident and participant at Irk Valley and Moston Vale envisioning workshops)
"Looking back, I am impressed with what we were able to achieve in a short period of time. The tools were really good to allow the possibility of conceptualizing different aspects of setting up an organisation. The teams developed a real energy, and it was fun. I wanted to set up the organisation we planned. You get a holistic picture of a whole strategy in a short period of time." (Participant at Enterprisers: a entrepreneurship course at Durham University in association with the ESRC).
“Personally I liked the way the kit was pre-prepared, because I have problems drawing… Whereas the leaves were attractive and they made it easy to write on them.” (Environmental Studies Lecturer at Bolton University)

“Thinkit provided significant value to the workshops [to identify local issues in five countries in the Middle East (Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Yemen)] at different levels:

(Anas Tawileh, Project Consultant, International Development Research Centre (IDRC))

“You could try to do exactly the same things without all these icons and things but you would almost be forced to make them up as you went along anyway, wouldn’t you? So you would just end up with something very boring. So you have these things already and you can just get straight on with the job.” (Irk Valley Resident and participant at Irk Valley and Moston Vale envisioning workshops)