01 Design Studio Workshop Instructions

Agile Experience Design Meetup NYC April 29, 2010 Design Studio Workshop What's a design studio session? A design studio session is a creative exercise that helps a group of people collaboratively explore concepts and understand a problem visually. Working from a shared context, individual team members sketch solutions to a problem, discuss them as a group, and then iterate concepts to improve them. The outcome of a design studio is a deeper understanding of a problem space and visual artifacts that reflect the team's consensus about the trade-offs of different solutions. Serious drawing skills are not required for success with this technique, just a willingness to participate and an ability to draw basic shapes. Feel free to explore crazy ideas and have fun! In the notes below, I’ve provided an overview of the preparation and timing I used tonight so you can organize and facilitate your own design studio workshop sessions once you’ve had a chance to experience it yourself. How do we prepare? Define the problem - You’ll get the best results using this technique if everyone in the group cooperates to solve the same problem. Depending on how well the group knows the problem domain, you may choose to schedule a meeting with the working group prior to the design studio session to identify and agree on the user stories or scenario you will sketch together. Before the design studio session, prepare materials the group can reference as they work. Depending on the situation, I’ve used index cards with user stories, a hand-written poster with a scenario we created on the spot or a printed packet with a business case and user profiles (personas). If you do a series of design studios in sequence with some space between, the group has a chance to think about the issues outside the session and can start to really gain momentum when they come together to work. Assemble creative supplies- The basic materials are large pieces of unlined drawing paper (e.g. newsprint pads, butcher paper, 11x17 printer paper) and markers. I like to also provide stickies, scissors, clear and blue tape and additional colored markers when available. Choose a facilitator - The facilitator will need a copy of these instructions and a way to keep time (e.g kitchen timer, pomodoro, iPhone) Author: Lane Halley Page 1 of 3 License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States Photo: lanehalley

Agile Experience Design Meetup NYC April 29, 2010 Design Studio Workshop Design Studio timing For this workshop, I’ve planned for a 90 minute design studio session with 40 people (eight groups of five people). When you use this technique with your teams, you can change the group size or timing of the sections to suit your needs. For example, you have fewer groups, allocate more time for “individual drawing” or “converge, redraw new concept” and subtract it from “large group presentation.” Creating smaller teams allows people more time to share and get feedback for their ideas but the overall timing would remain the same. The Ideal team size is three to five people. When you schedule your own sessions, don’t forget to add some additional time before and after to set up and clean up the room. You may also want to remind your participants to arrive on time, as it’s hard to join mid-way into the event. Session introduction (5 minutes) Review session timing. Organize participants into teams of five people each. Distribute and review the user stories or personas and scenarios you’ll focus on in the session. Tip: Write the session timing on a poster or white board to help people keep track. Individual drawing (15 minutes) Each person creates rough screen sketches or storyboards that illustrate the user experience of the user stories or scenario. Tip: Remind people to have fun and be creative! Feel free to use lots of paper, colored pens, stickies, tape and scissors. Presentation in groups (15 minutes) Taking turns, each person in the group explains their solution to the group. During this time, the other people can take notes, but there’s no conversation/comments/questions allowed. This is the time to LISTEN. The group is responsible for getting through all concepts in the allotted time. Tip: Ask people to try this. Instead of talking about the different features of your solution, tell a story about how a specific person would interact with your concept to accomplish the activities from the user stories or scenario. Discussion in groups, record feedback (15 minutes) The team then discusses each of the concepts one at a time. Talk about which parts of the concept are working and which parts need further thought. Record comments on each individual sketch (stickies are helpful for this). The group is responsible for getting through all concepts in the allotted time. Author: Lane Halley Page 2 of 3 License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States Photo: lanehalley

Agile Experience Design Meetup NYC April 29, 2010 Design Studio Workshop Tip: Ask people to try this: instead of saying “I like this” or “I don’t like this” evaluate the ideas using the user story or scenario, e.g. “This works because…” or “I don’t see how this solution solves this part of the scenario…” Converge, redraw new concept (20 minutes) Elect a person to draw the group concept. Each team collaborates to produce a concept sketch that represents the best direction produced by their group. Tip: Remind people that sometimes the new concept may include elements from several concept sketches, other times the group converges around one concept. Large group presentation (20 minutes) In the final 20 minutes, each group presents their converged sketch to the other groups. Tip: When using this technique on your own projects, don’t forget to capture any issues or comments about unsolved issues, areas for further exploration/research, etc. Congratulations! You’ve now completed the design studio workshop! I’d love to hear how your sessions went. Drop me a line at lbh.inc@gmail.com or @thinknow on twitter (hashcodes #agileux and #designstudio) Author: Lane Halley Page 3 of 3 License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States Photo: lanehalley

01 Design Studio Workshop Instructions

by Lane Halley on Apr 27, 2010

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01 Design Studio Workshop Instructions — Document Transcript