Native English speaker. Used a lot in architecture (buildings) and design competitions - the horse cart is where you would finish your illustrations working to the last minute on the way to final presentation.
I’m used to it in public engagements too, with respect to civic planning. It features in the story/movie The Best of Enemies[0], set in contentious public policy hearings. Worth watching.
Oh you says that in English too?
Good to know. It’s pretty widely used in software, video editing and those jobs with version to deliver at fixed and seemingly arbitrary dates …
I'll ask (french speaking) friends who owns a big 3D studio but... Native french speaker here and I never ever heard it used except to mean "a little cart" (totally unrelated to software / video editing).
> It’s pretty widely used in software
Definitely not.
> video editing
I take your word on it
> and those jobs with version to deliver at fixed and seemingly arbitrary dates
Same, USian, never heard it in software. I only know the word because I attended a public charrette for proposed zoning changes in my city. My wife (she told me when I asked about the word) did design charrettes in graduate school, which in school are a kind of brutal peer critique of projects at the end of the term, rather than an interactive presentation and gathering of feedback from stakeholders as originally envisioned.
The public charrette I attended for zoning changes was pretty fascinating. The most interesting part was that about twenty roughly block-sized pieces of the city were chosen as case studies, and for each block, an entire wall was dedicated to visualizing the current state of each block along with implications of the proposed change and other options, and a there was a person at each wall available to walk you through it and answer questions. (A lot of the members of the public who attended were developers who were asking extremely specific and wonky hypotheticals, so this was not an easy job.) I had no idea what to expect, and I was flabbergasted at the effort and professionalism that went into it.
I have heard it used exactly once before in Canada; seeing it here today was a “hug so they didn’t just make that up themselves” moment.
A quick entertaining story from that, that really highlighted the need to get all stakeholders involved at the design stage. The activity was designing the interior of a 10,000 sq ft startup incubator space. We were given the empty floor plan (inside a larger building), broke into groups, and each group independently did a floor plan. Lots of discussion about noisy/quiet areas, collaboration spaces/meeting rooms, small private spaces for phone calls, kitchen spaces and how to maximize the collision potential in the kitchens (people from different companies having conversations). It went really well and some great ideas came out of it.
And then one of the founders whose company would likely be inhabiting the space raised his hand. “I love all the variations we’ve all come up with, but I feel like no one is talking about the elephant in the room.” he says. Blank states all around. “We’ve all been focused on how to fill the empty area we’ve been given, but no one has said anything about the washroom on the floor plan we were given.”
The architects who were running the session bristled a little, while the rest of the room looked pretty confused. “What’s wrong with the washrooms? They’re placed close to the working area so that it’s a minimal interruption.”
“Ok, sure, but… I want you all to think about guys like me. I’m a 21 year old nerd with a barely funded company. We work long hours. We live our day-to-day lives on a super small budget. What do you think my diet is like? Do you really want the washroom that a guy who has eaten a $6 pizza every night for the last two weeks right next to the quiet desk you’re using every day?!”
Much laughter. Architects scribbling notes. And in the final built building, the washrooms are down a hallway, on the other side of a set of glass doors :D. Apparently it caused a huge hassle for the MEP contractors, since all of the plumbing had already been designed at that point, but I’m really not confident that that oversight would have been caught without that meeting.
I thought the word seemed a bit familiar, so I read the wiki article and noticed the use of the word at certain Universities and it clicked. I took a User Experience course at uni and remembered that the sprint for our last week was dubbed Charrette! Since, I haven't heard the word used again. I suppose "Design Sprint" aligns better with the Agile spirit.
Edit: Here's a picture https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charrette,_%C3%89col...