Be Innovative in Media Lab Bayern

I again had a chance to explore the media landscape in Munich! This time, I visited Media Lab Bayern, which is located in Balanstraße. On my way to the Media Lab Bayern, I realized that the streets and buildings were already well organized. Each building has its own number and was arranged by number and color. After entering the building and going upstairs, I could find an open space, co-working places, and several group working rooms.

Innovator for future media

Media Lab Bayern opened in 2015 and is also a non profit organization like Radio LORA—it was impressive that there were quite a lot of organizations in Munich which run without profit. In the website of Media Lab, it introduces itself like this: 

Since the Media Lab first opened its doors in 2015, we’ve helped and played host to a wide range of great ideas and innovative startups. Many have gone on to transform their startups into visionary products that are shaping the future of media. These are our rockstars!

A staff member, who led a workshop for us, also mentioned that they are trying to make a lot of good, expanded, and unconventional ideas. As she highlighted its freedom and innovative atmosphere, there were various people in the photo of Lab members—looked so global! I felt like they are suggesting and making something innovative and new for future media.

Journalistic standards: 4-Steps Design Thinking

During the workshop, I experienced a small project to suggest an idea about the media industry. I learned and followed a new way of idea thinking, 4-Steps Design Thinking. Our big theme was how we could make a podcast more appealing for younger audiences like students. In this project, we have to think and come up with some ideas like innovation managers of a local or public broadcaster. There were six processes in this design thinking—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement.

Firstly, in the ideation step, four people formed a team, creating four ideas in four minutes and sharing ideas within the group for six minutes. In this step, each person worked individually. The next step was rapid prototyping, voting on the best idea and building a paper prototype. Our team selected one idea from the four ideas of each one and created a ‘low-fidelity’ prototype. It was interesting that we only used simple materials like a piece of paper anda pen. Finally, we presented our prototype to other groups and got some feedback. 

Those steps were really organized and the most impressive point was the presence of the time keeper! Personally, I was thinking the more time we get for ideas, the better things will come out. However, I learned that if we have too much time for design thinking, we could lose our essential way. It’s important to check the accurate time so that we can keep initial principals and essence.

The atmosphere affects the mind

During the excursion, I hardly found some places for creating and actualizing lots of ideas about media. I could learn the processes and way of thinking about the media landscape, but the concrete results were unclear. It would be much better if we could experience the process of actualizing like Radio LORA and Media School.

After touring the lab, the most strong impression about it was its freedom. Even looking around inside for minutes, I could feel its comfortable and liberal atmosphere. There were several tables and chairs, which had computers in the working space. Still, most of the workers were working with their own laptops sitting at a bar table or lying on a sofa, not at the assigned seats. No one cared what other people were doing and I could feel no pressure at all. So, the atmosphere affects the workers’ mind, I guess. The unconventional and innovative ideas can come out from a comfortable atmosphere!