Communicating difficult topics between people of differing backgrounds, opinions and experiences can be a challenge, especially in a design process that aims to gather useful insight out of conversations between stakeholders in the project.

This master’s thesis looks into the usability of memes as a form of communication that will allow for better participation, more expressive opinions and clearer insights from participants in a design workshop environment. By analyzing existing literature, interviews, meme culture and surveying familiarity with memes across society this thesis aims to create a design workshop tool and activity that can help ease acquiring insights on complex topics.

The tool uses concepts like gamification, personas, design fiction and comparisons to create a “storyboard” of memes that in turn reveal the opinions and knowledge of the workshop participants as well as highlighting unique perspectives that might not otherwise have been shared.