Frontiers of Interaction 2011 - Successful Collaboration

Successful Collaboration
Keep your clients happy
FOI11 Steve PortigalJune 20, 2011 @steveportigal

Introduction 5 minutes
Exercise: Role-playing 25 minutes
Philosophy and Tactics for Collaboration30 minutes
Exercise: Role-playing 25 minutes
Wrap Up 5 minutes
Agenda

Today: Designers, working with clients
In our fields we have a lot of assumptions about the natural relationship between designers and clients. Let’s look at how to create harmony instead of conflict.
Who are we? Do you identify with designer? Or with client? Or something else?

Portigal
We help companies discover and act on new insights about their customers and themselves

Take a fresh look at people
Use existing ideas as hypotheses
What to make or do
Refine & prototype
Launch
Iterate & improve
We work throughout the development cycle
Explore new ideas

American Lens on Global Experiences
Kyoto
Amsterdam
London
Indonesia
Istanbul
California
Paris
Taipei
Bangalore

American Lens on Global Experiences
Canadian
Kyoto
Amsterdam
London
Indonesia
Istanbul
Toronto
Paris
Taipei
Bangalore

Definition?

Exercise: Role Playing
You are the end of a project and are sharing your final deliverables with your client (your client might be internal or external; you might be freelance, internal, or with an agency).
Actor 1 – play yourself, as a reasonable, effective designer
Actor 2 – play the “worst” client you can imagine
Audience – take notes about what happens – what are the breakdowns, failures

Scene 1
Actor 1 plays themselves as a reasonable designer about to deliver at the end of a project
Actor 2 plays a bad client
Audience: take notes about what you see happening
Action!

Scene 2
Actor 1 plays an arrogant unreasonable designer about to deliver at the end of a project
Actor 2 plays a great client
Action!
Repeat as time permits

Debrief: What did we see?
Where and why did the dialogue break down?
Where and why did the dialogue succeed?
What best practices did we see?

Philosophy and Tactics for Collaboration
Transitional slide – a big picture of something

Different professions have different cultures

Did he just say culture?

What is culture?

Culture defined
How a group of people make sense of the world, through common
Experiences
Beliefs
Knowledge
Values
Attitudes
Behaviors
Meanings
Patterns
Symbols

What do these cultures emphasize?

Acknowledging our differences

Empathy/sympathy for other circumstances

Shared experiences
This isn’t just about going to a restaurant – this is a new challenging experience for all of us.
We were there to do fieldwork, to do ethnography, to go into Japanese homes.
But this happens whenever we do fieldwork; we’re driving around, getting lost, sharing out of office time, informally, solving problems together, being uncomfortable, dining out.
This produces great relationships, you get a lot of insight into what kind of people they are.

For more on comfort and discomfort

Workshops
Shared activities can also be diving into the work together; we have clients join us in the field, read over field notes, come to our office and work through data together, we also do these workshops where people generate ideas. Often, our role is to facilitate them to get the information they need, in many ways we’re stepping back and letting go, we’re not solution givers, we are taking them to the point where they discover solutions.
This can challenge our own feelings of where our expertise is, but again, we are letting go. And interesting things can happen; if you can feel confident about yourself as someone that is enabling OTHERs rather than being yourself the master, then you are in a different position to make things happen.

Go beyond meeting them halfway
Understand
Create

Understand
Create
Create
Create
Create

Understand
Create
Create
Understand
Understand
Create
Create
Understand

What you can do - Consulting 101
Be on time, especially if they are on time
Use their communication tools (Email? Telephone?)
Emulate their work artifacts
In other words, speak their language

What else can you do?

Treat this like a design problem

Exercise: More Role Playing

Exercise: More Role Playing
Scene 3
Actor 1 plays a designer at the end of a project
Actor 2 plays a client
Play the scene, given what we now know
Action!
Repeat as time permits

Debrief: What did we see?

Definition, once again!

I’ve got a tip (that you didn’t cover) that works well for me…
Yeah, I’ve got a question for ya…
One new thing I learned today is…
@steveportigal
steve@portigal.com
+1-415-894-2001
Portigal Consulting
www.portigal.com

Coming in 2012!
A book by Steve Portigal
The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-interviews/

Grazie mille!
@steveportigal
steve@portigal.com
+1-415-894-2001
Portigal Consulting
www.portigal.com

Frontiers of Interaction 2011 - Successful Collaboration

by Steve Portigal

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