Workshops
design thinking workshop
10 participants, 1.5 hours.
For world usability day 2017, I led a Design Thinking workshop with a group of designers, copywriters, IT, and associate managers. The goal was to introduce participants to design thinking, and encourage them to think more about their customers by working through 3 phases of the design thinking process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate.
I researched, designed, organized and facilitated the workshop. The format was adapted from a design thinking workshop I attended by IBM, and some illustrations and exercises were taken from the dschool.edu website. My manager helped facilitate discussions during the workshop exercises.
mindsets
To start, participants were introduced to design thinking and some of the key mindsets associated with it.
Process Loops
We then looked at the different phases of the design thinking process, with an emphasis on the fact that the process is NOT linear.
empathize
Within small groups, participants chose from a list of 3 target customers in specific situations. They then created empathy maps to explore what those customers might be saying, doing, thinking and feeling. With no time to conduct formal interviews, participants questioned each other about how they might feel and react in the given situation.
define
After completing empathy maps, each group identified common themes that pointed to potential problems. They used their findings and insights to create a problem statement.
ideate
Using their problem statements, each group brainstormed potential solutions. They were encouraged to come up with a few real world solutions, as well as some 'fanciful' or 'futuristic' ones. After each member shared their solutions, participants had a chance to improve or add to their ideas, or come up with new ones.
Participatory design workshop
10 participants, 1.5 hours.
The team responsible for building a Promotion Optimization tool for product merchandisers wanted to incorporate user input on the design of a new dashboard. They were interested in learning what information would be most useful to the merchandisers, and how they preferred to have that information organized and presented.
I conducted initial stakeholder interviews to establish the goals of the product and the workshop, and researched participatory design methods. I planned the workshop exercises and facilitated the workshop with two co-facilitators.
Intro & Warm up
After a brief explanation of the goals and agenda of the session, participants were given a quick warm-up exercise to get the sharpies flowing, and to relieve them of any insecurities about sketching. They were asked to draw a helicopter using simple shapes.
SKETCHING
Before sketching their dashboards, participants were asked to think about the information and data that are required to do their jobs and make decisions on a daily basis. They then sketched their ideal dashboards to include what they thought was most important, and organized it in a way that made the most sense to them.
Discussion & Brainstorming
After sketching their ideal dashboards, participants presented and discussed their designs and explained why they chose to include what they did. They were then given an opportunity to refine their designs. I took notes while my co-facilitators kept the discussion going.
Dot Voting
After all ideas were presented, participants had an opportunity to vote on the features and information that they most wanted to see on the new dashboard.
outcome
Many participants included similar information, and even grouped them into the same categories such as Actions, Metrics, Notifications and Targets. After the sketching session, the product team had a much clearer understanding not only of what users wanted to see on the new dashboard, but why each section is important to them and how they would use and interact with the dashboard in their day to day work.