Design Studio: an intersection of ideas
Design Studio: When we pitched this term to engineering and business, many of folks across teams hardly had any clue of this method — where the agile perfectly fits with UX. And when we explained this to a broader audience, many were like it’s just like an ordinary brainstorming that we do regularly.
So to define it in simple terms that separate it from the regular design brainstorming is that this UX workshop combines divergent and convergent thinking at its very core. Where diverse and balanced skill sets people (such as design, product, and development) try to explore a different set of ideas to get a similar vision in a short amount of time the main reason for doing this is to discuss, critique, think of, occasionally argue on, and conclude with ideas together.
Design Studio is crucial because we often while working on a design or feature stumble upon a problem or a roadblock, and we try to find a solution to that problem by the very first idea that strikes our mind without actually exploring the other possible ways.
But after some time if going down the path if you realise that the concept or idea you picked up first is not working and it had another set out of new issues then you have to trash that work on that idea and start from the beginning wasting a lot of time and effort involved. So implementing this structured approach will help reduce time and effort and also it helps in bringing everyone on the same page.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
The best thing about design studio is that it allows group thinking rather than one person or group of people deciding on any particular idea. It will enable everyone to extensively participate in initial brainstorming to collect as many ideas as possible later taking a team-based voting decision to converge on those ideas. Therefore, everyone has increased buy-in into the success of the project.
Now let’s discuss the framework for the Design Studio using which you can effectively conduct this session in your teams.
Problem Definition: Let the UX team present with personas, user journeys, existing design, and constraints in the form of the keynote. It must be visual so that it’s not a boring functional spec and can easily be understood by anyone and ask as many questions as possible before directly jumping into thinking about ideas. Make sure the problem is super crisp and clear so that everyone can understand. And also let participants(Business, Engineering) ask as many questions as possible to get a broader idea of what they are understanding if there is something that is not aligned discuss it right away and clear doubts.
Diverge: Now that the problem definition is clear, let each attendee brainstorms ideas to generate an extensive set of concepts. The idea can be in any form or shape; it can be a rough sketch, UI wireframes, comic strips or phrases. (This segment is the divergent segment of the methodology). Set a proper time allocated to this so that people won’t get lost in the space. As a facilitator, you should remember that each participant during this period should focus on the quantity rather than quality.
Present: Now that everyone is done ideating its the time for presentation or pitch session wherein people will be allocated with 3 mins each to present their idea while the rest of the audience will be the critique. The best way is to handover each audience with a green and red marker and asks them to note down the strength and weakness that they find in that particular idea focusing on the problem while the presenter is pitching their solution.
Iterate: Now that each one has got feedback, people with similar solution statement can form teams to collaboratively work on that solution statement and make it better with the feedback received by all. Give this session a half-hour time starting from building teams to coming up with an updated solution statement. Post this ideation session again conduct a presentation or pitch session with the same time amount of time frame as before.
Converge: Having discussed many solution statements, now the team will collectively decide and choose the ideas that seem like a possible solution to the problem definition. The best way to coverage is by using the SCAMPER method by Bob Eberle to combine the many common elements and form a definite idea combined.
Collectively as a team choose and document the reasons parallelly to top five to six ideas and also its facilitator’s responsibility to make sure that ideas are prioritised that helps in solidify the design directions resulting from this workshop. The other useful ideas which came up during the session should not be discarded but kept aside in a bucket for later use. Once you have all the required solution statements documented and prioritised throw a doughnut party and end the session.
Key takeaways:
- Allow as many people as possible to participate, make it broad try include all the cross-functional teams, and if clients are involved, bring them up as well.
- Defining the problem clearly like for whom, for what and why we want to solve the problem — Frame the problem.
- Set clear goals for the session that by the end of the course, what is that you need from participants.
- Allow participants to come up with ideas as vivid as possible and make sure the ideation doesn’t get either too technical or too fantasy.
- Timing plays a preeminent role, so be particular about the time allocated for sketching or pitching session, sketching session — 10 mins and Pitching is 3 min per person.
- Allow open and honest critique.
- While converging ideas make sure everyone takes the decision collectively and make a bucket of ideas that you think will be useful in future.
- Make sure the big gain is that the team walks away with a great understanding of the problem. And a rough concept of the solution to that problem.
Two hours of a design studio session with a proper framework that fits into both the lean and agile environment will help you build a shared understanding of the problem and also help you plan and device a solution as a team successfully. And also nourishes the bond and bring in a lot of values within organisations.
To explore more:
If this post helped you then please share it and #spreadknowledge
Connect with me:
Twitter — https://twitter.com/tejt3j
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/designwarp
Empowering young creatives with global creative leaders spreading design knowledge to all — “ Nodes of Design Podcast.”
