Many of us are racing to be first to market, or release something in time for a specific event. Running and gunning on the product design battlefield is a tremendous challenge because it takes time to design things that provide ~real value for people and fit into a brand’s ecosystem in a meaningful way. How can you create things that provide utility, joy, and value while you’re chasing a moving target on the battlefield of design? This talk will show you.
Discover the essential art of design triage and explore techniques to provide solid user experience design (even when there’s no time), put mortally flawed projects out of their misery, and help deserving projects thrive. Design triage will help you shape things that serve people’s real needs and goals and give you tools to parachute into a fast moving situations so you can provide “nick of time” design that makes what your building truly helpful and delightful.
1. THE BATTLEFIELD ART OF
DESIGN TRIAGE
ANGEL ANDERSON
EXPERIENCE DIRECTOR, CP+B
@ANGEL #UXTRIAGE
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2. Number of advertisement messages the
average American is exposed to daily.
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3. billion
Amount global corporations spend each
year to make their product seem desirable
and to get us to buy them.
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4. Know what you have
in common with
agencies?
The fight to succeed
on the product design
battlefield.
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5. Faster!
Faster!
We’re
launching!
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6. Agencies feel your pain. For our
clients we engage in constant
battles, on multiple fronts, to
deliver work that goes beyond
ads to create products, tools, and
communities that truly connect
people to brands.
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7. We work across all
touch points and there’s
no rest period so we’ve
become masters of
triage.
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12. The design battlefield
creates a similar
“crucible of combat”
that provides the focus
& impetus for major
advancements in
craft, methodology,
and design itself.
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13. Design Triage
1. Prioritization
2. Selflessness
3. Mercy Killings
4. Scrappiness
5. Staying human
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14. 1
Prioritization
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16. Triage Tags
Casualties are sorted
and tagged based on
immediate needs and
probability of
EXPECTANT survival.
IMMEDIATE
DELAYED
MINOR
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17. EXPECTANT
IMMEDIATE
DELAYED
MINOR
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18. MINOR
The walking wounded. Small
burns, lacerations, minor fractures.
For us, these are low-impact projects
that wont be significantly affected
whether you help them or not.
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20. Forms & Error messages
Small but NOT Minor if impact is high.
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21. DELAYED
Surgery may be needed but condition
permits delay without risk to life & limb.
Projects in this group should be
addressed, but don’t require you to
drop everything.
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22. Reasons for delay
We have to wait The client needs
until the next to sign the SOW.
fiscal period.
We’re getting We need a proof
analytics next of concept first.
week.
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23. IMMEDIATE
Casualties that require immediate LSI
and/or surgery or they will die.
This are the projects that will have
significant impact. These really matter
and without your help, they will not
make it.
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24. EXPECTANT
Casualties that are mortally wounded.
Death is almost certain.
Critically flawed projects. These are
projects that no amount of time and
effort can save.
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25. When you work at the
intersection of creativity and
innovation, some of the
projects that cross your path
will be too convoluted to
succeed.
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26. It’s kinda morbid. If you had
time to save them all, you
would but instead, you and
your team must evaluate what
will have the most impact.
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27. Focus.
You must withdraw
your attention from
the other categories
so you can make a
difference here.
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28. 2
Selflessness
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29. On a battlefield, the
surgeon isn’t swooping
in to be the star. The
soldier, or in our case
the project is the star.
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30. Resist the urge to
hunker down in your fox
hole and “thin-slice” a
solution.
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31. Thin-Slicing
Can help us make
snap decisions.
BUT it’s easily
corrupted by our
unconscious
prejudices and
stereotypes.
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32. DON’T WIRE
BLOW:
When you blow past asking the right
questions and go right into drawing
the pictures of potential design
solutions.
-Abby Covert
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33. MALKOVICH BIAS
The tendency to believe everyone uses
technology like you do.
-Andrew Glusman
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34. CORE TEAM
PM
ECD
Account
Dev
UX
Creative
1. Leads digital strategy and planning
2. Collaborates in all phases
3. Responsible for the vision, quality
and performance of the work.
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35. Collaborative Process
THINK
Research
Ideation
Vision
Models MAKE
Prototypes
Wireframes
Comps
Code
CHECK
Testing
Analytics
KPI
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36. 3
Mercy Killings
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41. [Innovation] comes from
saying no to 1,000 things a
week to make sure we don’t
get on the wrong track or try
to do too much...
It’s only by saying no that you
can concentrate on the things
that are really important.
- Steve Jobs
Business Week, Oct. 12, 2004
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42. How to say NO
(without getting fired)
Healthy Org
1. Tell the truth
2. Ask questions
3. Tell stories
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43. How to say NO
(without getting fired)
Healthy Org Not-So-Healthy
1. Tell the truth 1. Reflect Conflict
2. Ask questions 2. Poison Pill
3. Tell stories 3. Quit
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44. 4
Scrappiness
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46. Channel
MacGyver.
Make awesome
happen with
what’s on hand.
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47. We can only afford
time and budget for
wireframes.
- Almost every company at
some misguided moment
in their history
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48. We can only afford
time and budget for
wireframes.
- Almost every company at
some misguided moment
in their history
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49. User insight has never been more
fast, easy, and affordable.
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50. Determine the vision
1. What is it?
2. Who is it for and what’s their payoff?
3. Why are we creating it?
4. How does it work?
5. What are the risks?
6. How can we make it successful?
7. Are there other questions?
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51. Create an environment where
good UX can happen.
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52. Lean UX?
Kanban?
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53. high
FIDELITY
Keynote
PowerPoint
Clickable
PDFs
Paper
Prototypes
low
slow fast
SPEED
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54. Don’t worship at the altar of
deliverables. The product is your
real deliverable.
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55. Tools for making UX storytelling
videos & photos are in your pocket.
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56. 5
Staying Human
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59. Find flow in
the chaos.
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60. Use your lulls.
When things quiet
down, give attention
to the Delayed and
Minor projects.
EXPECTANT
IMMEDIATE
DELAYED
MINOR
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61. Stay Inspired.
Take steps to re-ignite
your passion and stay
excited about what
you’re doing.
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62. Design Triage
1. Prioritization
2. Selflessness
3. Mercy Killings
4. Scrappiness
5. Staying human
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63. Thank You.
@angel
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Editor's Notes
The CP+B UX team works across all touch pints. Digital v Trad? No. Future is layering of holistic behavioral-focused product design w/ emotional narratives of marketing.It takes time and passion to design things that provide real value for people and fit a brand’s ecosystem a way that makes sense and leave #NoDeadEndsFor our team, there’s no rest period so design triage has become an essential art.
You might be familiar with the word from watching ER or war movies.
What’s interesting about battlefields and emergencies is that they often lead to medical advancementsWar is hell.To make it through and save lives medics over the year have had to INNOVATE.
Every war brings medical innovations, as horrific injuries force surgeons to come up with new ways to save lives.
Design triage is just one of those advancements. It help us parachute into a fast moving situations to provide “nick of time” design that makes what your building truly helpful and delightful.
Prioritization is number one for a reason. If medics arrived on a battle field and started treating the first casualty they see, they’d likely miss other casualties in more critical condition.
Triage begins by sorting through lots of similar things to facilitate grouping and decision making. You have to take a hard critical look at all the projects/products/features around you and prioritize.
Battlefield triage takes place in an environment limited in resources and time. Sound familiar?On battlefields, they use triage tags to sort casualties based on their immediate medical needs and according to which have the greatest probability of survival.
The colored bitsat the bottom are perforated and can be pulled off so that the lowest remaining color on the tag can communicate the the to other medical staff.Using a standardized approach to triage projects on YOUR battlefield can help you correctly sort and deal with the most important projects as quickly as possible.Let’s look at how triage categories can map to the kinds of projects we see in our world.
If you focus your attention on this group, you’re just spinning your wheels while more important projects remain undone. Ask yourself what difference a project will make in 1 year, and if the answer is none, it probably belongs to this group.
A lot of the work we do at CP+B goes beyond advertising but things like banners still play a role. What’s great is that our UX team can often categorize banners as minor because our extended team has the skill to create great banners. UX can chime in if we’re able but our team has the mechanics of creating compelling banners pretty well handled so we can focus on other things.
When you and your team are prioritizing be careful that you don’t accidently de-prioritize things that are small and un-sexy. For example, error messages may ~seem like an unimportant and incredibly boring part of crafting a user experience. But the tonality of error messages can swing an experience around from an almost certain abandonment to a conversion. So just because a project is small, doesn’t mean it’s minor. Think about the impact to determine how to classify a project.http://uxmag.com/articles/are-you-saying-no-when-you-could-be-saying-yes-in-your-web-forms
Think of the wounded person on the battlefield who’d love some immediateattention for his/her injuries but will still be OK even if they have to wait a bit.
The key to successful triage is to identify these projects as quickly as possible. Putsimply, if medical attention is not provided, the patient will die. Casualties do not remain in this category for an extended period of time, they are either found, triaged and treated, or they will die. Without your help, these projects will fail or end up so crappy that it won’t matter.
EXPECTANT Casualties in this category have wounds that are so extensive that even if they were the sole casualty and had the benefit of optimal medical resources, their survival would be highly unlikely. In battle, these types of casualties are to receive comfort measures and pain medication. But it’s different for projects.
When you work at the intersection of creativity and innovation, you are likely to see a few projects that are in this group. Ideas that are convoluted, not using tech appropriately, too it’s full potential, or the ratio of effort to impact is so low that you know it can’t succeed. While many projects in this category will die automatically, others will languish. You need to be able to identify these projects so you don’t waste all your time and energy.http://www.phoodie.info/2012/01/19/movie-meals-the-breakfast-machine-from-pee-wees-big-adventure-1985/
Despite its morbid nature, triage is extremely important if you want to maximize the # of lives, or project you save. If you don’t do it, the results will be far worse.It’s not really a case of assess and bail. If you had the time you’d try to do it all but you don’t have that luxury. There are tons of great ideas coming at you so it’s important that you and your team evaluate what will have the most impact. You have to recognize that energy must be put towards the things that matter most. http://www.tsgassociates.co.uk/English/Military/training_support.phphttp://www.tsgassociates.co.uk/downloads/1126092344-Oman%20-%20Saif%20Sareea%20II%202001%20287%20-%20Mass%20Casualty%2023%20october%20(2.JPG
If you want to save the projects that are most critical, you must withdraw your attention from the other groups. Otherwise too many great projects that need immediate attention will die needlessly.Remember that triage is not treatment. Constant reassessment is needed to identify casualties who may have deteriorated or improved.http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/12/triage/
Just like on the battlefield, you are not swooping in to be the star. The soldier, or in our case, the product is the star. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/3185810838/in/photostream/
When time is tight, it’s tempting to hunker down and just crank out a design. Especially if you’ve been doing this a long time. it’s tempting avoid all the shooting and creative bombs going off and instead do a bit of what MalcomGladwell describes as “thin-slicing”
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by MalcomGladwell he describes "thin-slicing” as our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, this is an idea that spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. But even Gladwell explains how an expert's ability to "thin slice" can be corrupted by their likes and dislikes, prejudices and stereotypes (even unconscious ones such as Implicit Association and psychological priming), and how they can be overloaded by too much information.
A battle field surgeon doesn't’t just appear and start treating the wounded. Neither should you. If you start banging out wireframes, you may be missing out onThe opportunity to ask the right question. other more important projects, features, etc.
Remember that we all suffer from Malkovich Bias: The tendency to believe that everyone uses Technology like you do. Tern coined by Andrew Glusman.
At CP+B we like to say that marketing is a team sport. That philosophy plays out in our structure.Don’t try to be the brilliant genius, be a good facilitator - Core TEAM collaborationReal brilliance and rich product are born when a group of diverse people with diverse disciplines to come together as a team and think through, work through, write through, or sketch through issues. http://www.practicallyux.com/revising-ux/#comments
Get the whole team involved in a simple iterative process.http://www.webgrrls.com/blog/2011/08/03/step-by-step-lean-user-experience/
We talk about failing early, failing often cozying up to failure. But in practice it’s hard to let things die, it’s harder still to kill them even when you believe it’s the right thing to do.
On a battlefield, everyone deserves to live but when it comes to products, some should just be put out of their misery.
Mercy killings are necessary.Teams get burned outLost confidence in leadershipNegative opportunity costs
It’s hard. It’s scary. Practicing triage is extremely challenging because it requires saying “no” again and again to what you may feel are good causes. It’s the time management equivalent of saying ”no” to wounded people calling for your help. You simply don’t have time to comfort all your dying projects or to nurse the non-essential ones. If you don’t learn to make these tough decisions consistently, many really good projects will die, and that would be a far greater tragedy. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/12/triage/
If you think I’m wrong just look at the words and actions of Steve Job. This was a man who could be a huge champion of doing cool stuff and he got many people and companies to say yes to doing the seemingly impossible but perhaps one of his greatest skills was saying no.
But how do you say no when you’re NOT billionaire CEO of the most valuable company in the world?
I’m no career councilor but I have worked in a variety of situations where saying no is difficult. Often the ability to say no depends on how high in the org is the person who wants the shiny thing? Healthy orgTell the truth – if the org is healthy and the stakeholders are rational, say no and provide a set of principles that would lead to success. Keep asking questions.Use questions to tease out the vision or illustrate the fact that there isn’t one. Having a vision will help you use common sense to know what to say no to. If there is a vision, and a project or feature goes against it, use that as your morphine shot.Tell stories -personify the project or feature so that the company or the team can start to empathize with how crappy the user experience is.
Not-So-Healthy, If you work in a very politicized organization where saying no is a no-no,Take careful notes to illustrate how stakholders have a different vision for the thing and reflect that conflict back to themA friend of mind calls this “grass roots murder” because it’s the systematic and subtle undermining of group think via hint and innuendo. Nobody likes a nay-sayer, but a series of subtle pooh-poohs in the right places, at the right moment can have a powerful cumulative effect.Quit or be ready to quite.
Once you’ve prioritized, and helped the bad projects exit this world. It’s time to design the things that matter. And of course it needs to be done like yesterday, so you’re going to have to be SCRAPPY. Just like a battlefield surgeon, You don’t have the time and resources you’d like. No time and budget for the process you’d like, or the tools that would help. Battlefield surgeons face these challenges all the time. Do what they do: make it work.
At CP+B we have and entire department of cultural anthropologists who help us gain insights about the people we design for but I’ve worked at many places where they’d say things like “No time or budget for research” You have to call bullshit.
You have to call bullshit because…
Getting insight from our customers has never been easier, faster or more achievable than it is today. It won’t be perfect research but it’s better than nothing. Be persistent and energetic in providing a range of options.
If the project is in really bad shape, start with a vision everyone can get behind. No methodology can substitute a real vision. Our core teams use these deceptively simple, jargon-free questions to kick off a vision discussion.Assemble your core team and try to answer these questions as clearly and concisely as possible.
Battlefield surgeons keep clean, organized operating areas where everyone knows where everything is so they can provide the best care possible. You need to similarly create environments where good UX can happen.So many startups are trying to launch in UX is going to be the differentiator – if that’s the case, we need to actually have orgs that can produce good UX. It can’t come from one person or department; it has to be part of the organization’s core principles. If you’re in a position to command this doIf you’re not, reach out and forge relationships with Devs, Creatives who are sensitive to UX.
When you're iterating quickly, heavyweight deliverables, like specifications and even wireframes, can get in the way and slow you down. Rapid prototypes and whole-team discussion can be more effective. If you have fancy tools for prototyping, use them. If not, paper prototypes, keynote, clickable PDFs, etc.
No one comes to work say, “I’m going to read a massive report today!” Save your paper for sketching! Once you’ve done your scrappy user research, or have worked through problem as a team, forget the huge doc and instead present it as a workshop. Keep your notes and a high level summary.
If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video is worth a million. Try making a short video to show how a user would experience your design.
In a fast paced environment where you’re working with your team to make something awesome, at times it’s possible to forget that you’re still a person.
To perform effective triage you have to maintain a certain level of mental health, otherwise you’re going to burn out.
Find time to rest. Medics have to preserve energy so they can focus on a battlefield. Doctors in the ER take naps too. Rest is an important part of triage. If you aren't rested, you won’t be able to focus when needed.Speaking of focus…
We face all the same distractions as any modern office worker; exploding inboxes, emergency phone calls, etc. and we also have to constantly switch gears where we’re working on a user journey for this project, conducting research for another one, etc. Rather than lamenting that you don’t have time to get into flow, think about a battlefield medic who’s moving from one horrifically wounded person to the next. Different injuries, different needs but you find flow in the chaos so you can focus on one person/ project at a time.
Remember that you can foster good will by going back to the projects that you previously diverted attention from. Now is the time to help on those projects.Remember that triage is not treatment. Constant reassessment is needed to identify casualties who may have deteriorated or improved.
In wartime, governments work hard to keep everyone’s head in the game. We have to do the same. We have to say inspired. Take steps to stay inspired by what you’re doing, the people you’re collaborating with and also the world around you.
In the long run, these habits can make a huge long-term difference in your work. You have to be vigilant but if you embrace these principles, design triage will help you create things that provide utility, joy, and real value.Remember these principles and get out there. Go rock YOUR battlefield. http://library.marshallfoundation.org/posters/library/posters/poster_full.php?poster=586