Co-Designing with Colleagues
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A 10 minute talk I gave at the Service Lab London meetup in November 2022. As User Experience professionals we are skilled in design thinking when it comes to products and services, but what if we applied these skills to co-design our work life? What would it look like to navigate difficult conversations in the workplace, progression conversations, and line management all with a co-design mindset? We already have the skills and tools that we need to design better experiences for end users but have we thought about if and how we can design better experiences for ourselves in our work life? In this talk I will share my views and experience on how taking this approach has had an impact on my career so far and some practical steps I’ve taken.
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Co-Designing with Colleagues
- 1. About Tricia ● Lead User Researcher @ Zaizi ● 12 years in UX ● Lived and worked in 5 countries ● Private and public sector ● Consultant and in-house
- 2. Co-designing with colleagues @tricialeeux Slides will be made available. Questions at the end or later on the chat or Twitter.
- 4. As Designers and Researchers we have a superpower that enables us to create better work environment for ourselves
- 5. Perspectives I’ve Reflected on As a line manager As a line managee As a user researcher in an agile delivery team
- 6. As a Line Manager I co-designed the individual manager/managee relationship with the people I line managed
- 7. Invent How could we do things differently in the next 3 months Act What should we do next?
- 9. As a Line Managee I co-designed my career progression experience with my line manager and head of practice
- 10. As Head of Research, when thinking about progression for a researcher … As a Line Manager, when thinking about progression for someone I manage … As a researcher, when thinking about progression for myself …
- 11. “I don’t always have enough time to think about these things myself so I like that you created a space and time for me to think about these things and share it with you.” - Feedback from one of my seniors about the session
- 12. As a user researcher in an Agile delivery team I co-designed our ways of working with the product manager
- 14. Research Risk Statements Reframed to focus on Impact on Product From Insufficient user research activity conducted resulting in significant gaps in knowledge to design the system with leads to usability issues To Rework or having to fix parts of the system that we know have unresolved usability issues and areas that have not been informed by user research.
- 15. Co-Design with colleagues ● Give people a heads up ● Be clear on the value to them ● Frame as an experiment ● Don’t skip the intro or warm up ● Lead with curiosity ● Focus on ‘help me understand’ ● Put the problem in front of you not between you ● Agree and assign actions ● Follow up Tips on how to make it work well
- 16. “Seek first to understand then to be understood.” Book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
- 17. Q&A Stay in touch to keep the conversation going Twitter: @TriciaLeeUX LinkedIn: in/tricialeeux Email: tricialeeux@gmail.com
- 18. Zaizi is hiring! Service Designers (contract and permanent) Content Designers (permanent)
Editor's Notes
- I’m Tricia Visual description Long dark hair Brown skin Wearing a gold cardigan and black top In a room with white walls and lots of plants I currently work at Zaizi as a Lead User Researcher I’ve been in UX for about a decade now I have a wide range of experience working in different countries, sectors and types of organisations
- For this talk I reflected on my own experiences and what I’ve learnt so far at a few different places I’ve worked A couple of places are given here including Google, JP Morgan, MOJ and FutureGov
- I believe that … We’re quite skilled and used to applying our design thinking skills to create better product and services for users, but what if we used these skills to make our work life better for ourselves
- I can see this situations from 3 perspectives As a line manager As a line managee As a user researcher on a delivery team All these focus on: Transfer design thinking from projects to our own lives Move from trying to figure things out on my own and how to bring people into my problem space to help me figure it out
- Situation I’ve managed several researchers and designers in my career so far Task My role and responsibilities as a manager may be clear But each individual is different in terms of what management approach brings out the best in them Especially early in my management experience, i wanted to be sure i was learning and improving myself I needed to build and maintain relationships with the people I manage
- Visual description Action We all use retros Sometimes retro dont like a safe space for the team I decided to experiment with using this well know tool as a tool to design and iteration on how we work together
- Result Permit the self indulgence but when I was thinking about the results of this approach this stood out feedback from line managees
- Situation I wanted to progress to the next level in my career The organisation did not have an updated or clear progression framework for my role, so I wasn’t sure what was expected of me to progress I needed clarity on what I had to work on to be considered ready for promotion My line manager and head of research were the key colleagues I needed this clarity from However, they both were super stretched for time Task Understand what my line manager and head of practice needed to know about me and my work so that they can determine how ready I was for promotion Get visibility on how progression worked at the organisation so I know what was needed from me
- Visual description Action Proactive Involve other people find a solution that works for others not just me Designed and facilitated a 30minute session with my manager and head of Focus on understanding how I can make it easy for them to determine how ready I was for promotion Focus on capturing individual goals, needs and challenges when it came to a promotion decision for a researcher at the organisation Result Created an equal space for all 3 perspectives to be expressed and shared Focused more broadly on progression for a researcher broadly at the organisation and not just me personally Carved out a time and space in their busy scheduled to think about and start setting expectations with me on how we can keep talking about this
- Result feedback from seniors, brought some ease to what can sometimes be a tricky conversation
- Situation Worked on a big project with 2 other reseachers Conflict between product/business focus and priorities and what we were hearing from users in user research Low level of understanding of how to work with and utilise user research Several product risks arising because of all of this and no way to capture these risks and work on them A user research risk log existed but was not taken seriously by product or the business Task Document risks me and other researchers on the team were experiencing and have constructive conversations with the product manager on a way forward The ultimate goal was to a ensure a high quality product that is informed by user research
- Visual description Action 1 Empathy mapping with other researchers first Easy to get into the frustrations of working with colleagues who do not seem to understand how research works I observed that the existing research risks statements were written mainly from the perspective of researchers, The existing risk were obvious to the researchers but not so much to the product team I facilitated an empathy mapping session for me and 2 other researchers to get us to focus on the product perspective first, before creating another version of the risk log Essentially using our design tools on ourselves! Something I did not do but would be interesting to try to make this even more about applying co-design would be to go through the empathy map with the product manager to open up a conversation that focused on ‘help me understand’ your challenges and how I can help.
- Action 2 By putting ourselves in the shoes of a product manager, we were able to reframe all the risks previously identified in the project On this slide I give an example of one of those risks The main change that is highlighted here is the shift from focusing on ‘not enough research’ to ‘rework and wasted effort’ as a risk We then set up a session with product that focused on… based on your priorities and the product challenges, we’ve observed some risks that user research can help with. And then we went though the log. Co-design risk log with product Result/outcome = research risk log written from product/business perspective
- It’s not just about the design tools and templates To co-design with colleagues we need to remember to think about designing a safe space where people feel comfortable and ready to share, just like we would with users Here are some specific tips I’ve found helps set up this environment, across all the perspectives and scenarios I’ve shared today.
- Be an active participant in shaping what work environment looks like for you … rather than passive or reactive
- We typically seek first to be understood. Instead, most people listen to the reply. They're either speaking or preparing to speak. Empathic listening is listening with the intent to understand. Summarises the entire talk
- Does anyone have any questions for me? What are you working on and how can I help you? Is there anything I can clarify for you? What is one thing that you will take away from today? What question do you think somebody who is not in this room would have about what we’ve just talked about? What questions are you left with now that we’ve had this conversation? End I want to continue this conversation with you all, here’s how to keep talking with me. Visual description