Designing a Theory of Change in Less Than an Hour

Enabling Rapid, Collaborative Development with a Context-Independent Card Set

Abstract

The increasing focus on societal impact in academia calls for effective tools that can help to address grand challenges through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration. While Theories of Change are widely used to plan and evaluate the societal impact of research projects, applying this approach often proves to be time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially in the academic context with rigid structures and competing priorities.

To address some of these challenges, the Evaluating Societal Impact team at Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands) applied user-centred design to develop a card game that supports the development of Theories of Change in a more accessible, efficient and engaging way. The cards can be used in different contexts and without prior training or knowledge to understand envisioned change processes, significantly reducing the time needed to create a first Theory of Change and making the process fun through gamification.

Trialled with a range of partners in academia, government organisations and municipalities, it has proven to be effective in fostering co-creation, overcoming power imbalances in a group setting and helping to accelerate the development of a shared vision. The tool is gaining widespread interest in the Netherlands and internationally as it offers a context-independent, time-efficient and user-friendly approach to embedding societal impact practices within academia. By providing a concise and engaging experience, the game is used to introduce diverse groups to Theories of Change, fostering interest and engagement with the method. This journal contribution describes our approach and experiences in developing and using the card game. We discuss the possibilities and limitations of the Journey of Progress card set with the aim of inspiring future comparable approaches and solutions in policy evaluation.