Getting and keeping your team aligned while designing a product or service is an ongoing effort. By visualizing our context and purpose we can ensure that everyone involved knows what they’re working towards and why. In this workshop we went through the early phases of a typical design project to set that context and chart a path towards designing solutions. We started by making the context of our project visual by finding imagery that communicates the essence of our mission. This material would go on the wall of our “war room” and be the first thing everyone sees when they enter the project space. The next important aspect to understand is the customer. We used a fun, low-fi method to express the characters involved in our story, giving us a starting place to validate the assumptions we are making about them. Finally, we visualized the journey our customers take and identified their potential pain points, our solutions, and the assumptions we need to test along the way. All of these exercises focused on the visual artifacts and how, when accessible to everyone, they create a shared sense of purpose, encourage participation, and foster group ownership of the solution.

1. LeanUX NYC 2014
Show Me What You’re Thinking
Visualizing progress to foster feeling
April 11, 2014

2. Hi. I’m Ray
Ray DeLaPena
Director of Strategy, Catalyst Group
catalystnyc.com
@rayraydel
Introduction

3. Who are you?
Introduction

4. About this workshop
Introduction
Preface
Setting the Stage
• Collage Exercise
Understanding the Players
• Character Exercise
Telling the Story
• Story Mapping Exercise

5. Let’s start a project!
Preface
We’re going to identify a product opportunity
in a well known problem space.
We’ll focus on how “interim artifacts,” visible
together, tell a story the team can connect with
and evolve.

6. Attending a Conference
Our Problem Space
Travel & Logistics
• Where am I going and when?
Social & Networking
• Where’s the party? Who should/did I meet?
Content
• What did I learn?

7. Setting the Stage
Setting the Stage
Work in a space with feeling
Set the tone for the project
Not just images and artifacts, but words too

8. Collage
Setting the Stage
Definition: A technique of an art production, primarily used
in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an
assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole.
• Helps overcome hindrances
• Fear of drawing
• Lack of inspiration
• Not just pictures... Words help too
Image courtesy of Susannah Conway www.susannahconway.com.

9. Collage
Setting the Stage
Some basic compositional structures
ONE: Circle, unity, wholeness, inclusion, gathering,
emanating from a central core
TWO: Duality, attempting to find balance, showing conflict
or tensions, “drawing a line in the sand”
THREE: The pyramid/triangle, the Venn diagram, hierarchy
of order
FOUR: Square, corners of the earth, the elements, balance

10. Cut! Paste! Draw! Write!
(30 minutes)
Collage Exercise
• What speaks to you about the problem space?
• Help your team relate to the attendee
• What do you want the experience to look and feel like?

11. The Players
The Players
Personas, proto-personas, characters
What are they?
Why do we create them?
How do we use them?

12. Characters
The Players
How are they different from “traditional”
personas?*
Create them vs. describe them
Deeper emotional connection
* Keep in mind, you’d revise and evolve these as you engage with real customers.
For more info search for Chelsey Delaney on SlideShare

13. Our method
The Players
1. Fill in their attributes
2. Draw them. Represent important characteristics.
3. Speak for them

14. Who are we designing for?
(10 minutes)
Character Exercise
Fill in the attributes of your character
Name
Age
Income
What’s their role?
Where do they live?
Who paid?
How “connected” are they?
Why are they here?

15. Give them a face
(10 minutes)
Character Exercise
Draw your character
Don’t worry if it’s ugly
Put them in context
Have fun with it!

16. Tell us what bothers you
(15 minutes)
Character Exercise
WW_S (What Would your character Say?)
Take 5 minutes each to role play your character
What are they nervous about?
What are they annoyed about?
Use their voice

17. Telling the Story
Telling the Story
Track our characters through all the steps/
stages of our story
Call out moments of:
• opportunity
• pain
• emotion
• conversion

18. The Narrative Arc
Telling the Story
Beginning > middle > end
1. Exposition
2. Inciting Incident
3. Rising Action
4. Crisis
5. Climax
6. Denouement, or Falling Action
7. Resolution

19. Plotting our moments
Telling the Story
Identify key moments for your product along the arc
and consider how to communicate them.
Hint: Use images from your collages, go back into the magazines,
or draw something.
For more info check out UX Matters and search for: Storymapping by Lis Hubert and Donna Lichaw
and Mapping User Journeys by Shean Malik

20. LeanUX NYC II --
Journey to Jersey
(20 minutes)
Story Mapping Exercise
Plot your story
• Awareness (Exposition)
• Initial Information (Inciting Incident)
• Investigation, Decision, Justification (Rising Action)
• Registration, Payment, Logistics (Crisis)
• Conference Begins! (Climax)
• Conference Ends (Denouement or Falling Action)
• Post-conference Reflection and Sharing (Resolution)

21. LeanUX NYC II --
Journey to Jersey
(20 minutes)
Story Mapping Exercise
Insert your moments
• Confusion
• Frustration
• Unmet Need
• Opportunity to delight

22. Let’s review.
Review
We’ve made a lot of assumptions.
Think about experiments that would test their
validity.
Consider how your thinking and feeling would
evolve as you put your product out in the world.
Imagine how your space, your deliverables, and your
product would reflect the changes.

23. The End.
Thank you!
Ray DeLaPena
Director of Strategy, Catalyst Group
catalystnyc.com
@rayraydel
raydelapena@gmail.com
Thank You