Design workshops in institutional contexts tend to follow a predictable script: Post-it notes, dot voting, "How Might We" questions written in marker on kraft paper. The facilitator arrives with a toolkit. Participants sense they are being processed through a method. The output is a wall covered in ideas that no one owns.
At France VAE, the national platform for prior learning recognition built within beta.gouv.fr, the field actors we needed to work with were called AAPs: Architectes Accompagnateurs de Parcours. These are professionals who sit with candidates for months, help them articulate what they know, and guide them through an administrative process that is genuinely complex. They had deep expertise. They had zero patience for theater.
