What
This workshop is a team activity to design the UX for a product/ feature with any team members regardless of design expertise.
Who
- 5 – 8 people recommended
- Larger than 8 could be wise to run parallel sessions
Supplies
- Pens
- Pencils
- Felt-tip markers or similar
- Highlighters (multiple colours)
- Sketching templates (can be blank sheets of A3 divided into 6 segments)
- A1 self-stick easel pads
- Dot stickers
Process
- Problem definition and constraints
- Ensure everyone is aware of the problem you are trying to solve
- Everyone understands the assumptions
- Everyone knows the users you are serving
- The hypotheses you’ve generated
- Constraints in which you are working
- Individual idea generation (diverge)
- Give each person a sketching template
- If people find prospect of a blank page daunting optionally add a step whereby everyone writes the name of a persona/ pain point in each one (can repeat) and spend 5 minutes doing this
- Give everyone 5 minutes to generate 6 low-fidelity sketches of solutions
- These should be visual articulations, not words
- If you can draw a square, a circle, and a triangle you can draw any low-fidelity diagram
- Presentation and critique
- 3 minutes per person
- Go around the table
- Each person holds up their sketches and presents them to the team
- Presenters should state who they were solving a problem for and which pain point they were addressing and then explain the sketch
- Each member of the team should provide critique and feedback to the presenter
- Feedback should be focused on clarifying the presenter’s intention – no opinions allowed as they get people defensive and provide little clarity
- How does this address the persona’s problem?
- I don’t understand that part. Can you elaborate?
- Iterate and refine in pairs (emerge)
- 10 minutes
- Each pair has an A3 sheet
- Pair up (it is a good idea to pair up with someone with similar ideas if there is someone)
- Each pair will be working to refine their ideas
- Goal is to pick ideas that have the most merit and develop a more evolved, more integrated version of those ideas
- Get more specific here, more details
- Once time is up do the Present and Critique section again
- Team idea generation (converge)
- 45 minutes
- The team must converge on one idea
- The goal for this idea is to be the best for success an to be the basis for forming an MVP and running experiments
- Use the easel pads or a whiteboard for the idea
- Sketch components and workflow
- Will need to compromise and pare back features
- Any ideas that don’t make the cut this time go into a parking lot to make it easier to let go of ideas
- Put the output of this in a visible central place
References
- Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf, pg 52 – 57
