This talk was given at Link Festival, Melbourne (2015). It explores how we can all use the lo-fi materials we have in our office stationery cupboards to make simple but innovative tools for teams to use, to help them in strategy, decision-making, prioritisation and communication. Not just for designers! But for any team.

1. BEN CROTHERS | ATLASSIAN | @BENCROTHERS
BRING OUT YOUR INNER DESIGN THINKER
Crafting your own
tools for change

2. Are these still around?
IT’S 2025…

3. How can we craft
tools for change
with what’s already
around us?

4. We’ve got problems…

5. We’ve been swindled

6. Craftsman
Tools through the ages: Up to 18th C. - Agrarian

7. Mechanisation & division of labour
Toolmaker Manufacturing
Tools through the ages: 19th C. - Industrial

8. Rise of computers & software
Software
Services
Toolmaker Manufacturing
Tools through the ages: 20th C. - Services
Processes
Kanban
Rapid prototyping

9. Tools through the ages: 21st C. - Experience
Toolmaker ManufacturingServicesSoftware
Cloudification of software & services

10. Tools through the ages: 21st C. - Experience
Services
Cloudification of software & services
Toolmaker ManufacturingSoftware
?

11. Tools through the ages: 21st C. - Experience
Services

13. The thinking that
got us to here,
won’t get us to there

14. Get back that
making feeling

15. Change =
Engaging the
head, heart and
hands

16. Helps us engage the head, the heart
and the hands
Design thinking

17. Deep and holistic user understanding
Visualising, prototyping and refining
Fostering a culture to bring out ideas from
anyone in an organisation
Design thinking

18. The process

19. Prototype Test & learnIdeate

20. Prototyping
formats
More ideas
Prototype Test & learnIdeate

21. Making is as
valuable as
what is made

22. Tools for change
UN-TAPPED

23. Brainstorming
FIRST GEAR

24. Journey mapping
SECOND GEAR

25. Prototyping
THIRD GEAR

26. The ‘blank tool’ problem
?
Brainstorming
Translating
Organising
Prioritising
Deciding
Testing
Prototyping
Educating

27. 1. Canvases
2. Scorecards
3. Posters
4. Playing cards
Example formats to help

28. Great for collecting all essential information
for your idea, project, target audience, product
or service
Bake a process in
Forcing function for clarity before moving ahead
1. Canvases

29. Example - Business Model Canvas
All key
pieces of info
in one place

30. Atlassian Experience Canvas
Hypothesis - what we
set out to test
Minimum viable
experience (MVE)
End-to-end demo
What problem we’re
trying to solve

31. Making your own
1. Nominate a goal
Build a product/service
Find a business partner
Educate the organisation
2. Gather types of info
To make decisions
To communicate to others
To let others take action
4. Fill in with your team
Use the canvas to discuss
and fill in answers
3. Make a canvas
Arrange all the key
pieces of info into boxes

32. Great for team-based decision-making
A set of measures to help rate the health of
projects, teams and outcomes
Use them to clarify, not to police
Involve the team in choosing what’s scored
2. Scorecards

33. Atlassian Project Health Monitor
1 full-time owner
Balanced team
Shared understanding
Value and metrics
End-to-end demo
Consistent communication
Dependencies
Velocity
8 areas that indicate project health,
rated as:
Green - on track and all good
Yellow - needs attention
Red - Fix this puppy!

34. Atlassian Project Health Monitor
1 full-time owner
Balanced team
Shared understanding
Value and metrics
End-to-end demo
Consistent communication
Dependencies
Velocity
DATE 1 DATE 2 DATE 3

35. Making your own
1. Discuss with the team
What makes a project
healthy?
What’s holding us back?
2. Condense
Refine your ‘health criteria’
to just enough
4. Fill in with your team
Pick a real project, fill it out
Iterate and refine
3. Have a simple scale
What’s your scoring scale?
1, 2, 3?
Red, yellow, green?

36. Great for re-framing ideas and clarifying value
A lot of fun to create as a team
The process of making them is just as important
as reading them
3. Posters

37. In-flight safety card
Fun format
Smart questions

38. Making your own
1. Define the audience
Who are you wanting to
communicate to?
What is their context?
2. Define the value
Why should your audience
care?
What’s the call to action?
4. Make it interactive
Prototype, gauge interest
How might you make people
do something with it?
3. Design the poster
Movie poster?
In-flight safety card?
In-store product?

39. Great for being a catalyst for richer
conversations and game-play
‘Mobile version’ of larger tools
Creating them from other assets forces you to
simplify and clarify
Easy and cheap to print - makeplayingcards.com
4. Playing cards

40. Customer benefit
cards
For brainstorming:
- what’s the most
important benefit
for this feature?
- How might we
improve this
feature according
to these benefits?

41. Design + Agile cards
Persona cards
Communicards

42. Role cards
Questions about what this
role does
Persona cards
Questions about how this type
of person behaves

43. Using persona cards to ideate and validate

44. Making your own
1. Pick a function
Brainstorming?
Prioritising?
Reducing something else?
2. Explore formats
Regular playing cards?
Just words on cards?
Drawn pictures?
4. Play with them
Prototype, gauge interest
Are there different ways you
could use them?
3. Design the cards
Is it a game, or thinking
device?
Do you score points?

45. Making is as
valuable as
what is made
IF YOU TAKE AWAY ONE THING…

46. BEN CROTHERS | ATLASSIAN | @BENCROTHERS
THANK YOU. GO FORTH.
Make change!