Project Touchstones: How to Bridge Competing Viewpoints and Build Vision, Consensus, and Innovation / Jess McMullin

Monday, March 26, 2007

A key to working with business is to become a peer--design deliverables together.

Tools:

• Affinity diagrams—sticky notes
  With any data where trying to ID patterns
• Sketching with clients—conversational; use as a prop to articulate priorities (ask them to draw and then why did you draw it that way)
• Design the Box—design the elements of packaging (name, tagline, 3 key selling features, imagery/color/type; feature set)--helps to focus on the important
• Backcasting—start at ideal; what are assumptions and what has to happen—looking at dependencies/relationships; back to current situation
• Mental model/alignment diagram--lines up user activities with features of product--can build on wall with stickies

Principles for transforming from review/approve to working together
1. codesign—get over hesitancy of showing unfinished work
2. simple—should not have to be an expert to participate
3. concrete—sketching, sticky notes
4. flexible—should mean different things to different people; see technical and business implications in deliverables
5. evidence based—informed; secondary research (gender and video games); qualitiative research—looking at users in context
6. surface agendas—look for things that will; some things are easy to hide agenda behind; figure out how people really feel

Approach
1. getting people to work together—need to have the important folks at the table (ex: marketing VP); difficult to get them to commit
2. peel back the layers—get to agendas

• ask 5 why’s of any type: how is that important, why did you come, what do you hope to learn

3. partner, pilot, publicize—partner with influencers; small pilots; publicize the success; pulls in senior executives; need to have people there to “make sure you are doing the right job”

With sketching—can stay away from literal representations to help to remove from final product if people tend to get too committed to their view as final; stress at front that we will rip all of it up; emphasize that business skills is what is needed—not design

Consultant versus in-house challenges—point to processes already in place; then add the notions of codesign.

Application for L&ET:

• We have the perpetual problem of potential candidates for this type of thing with no time to participate. I think that if we went intense and made quick progress, that folks would be motivated to participate.
• Projects to try this one:
  o search box
  o room scheduler
  o Staffweb
  

Links for More Info:

• Slide show and podcast