Uploaded byDeb Aoki
Simple Sketching for Innovation
Deb Aoki discusses the integration of sketching and storyboarding in UX design and content strategy, emphasizing their role in enhancing user engagement and understanding. Through her experiences, particularly with eBay's holiday promotions, she illustrates how drawing can facilitate brainstorming, illustrate customer journeys, and capture key insights. Aoki advocates for design thinking that focuses on human needs, using visuals to create memorable and impactful communication.
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Simple Sketching for Innovation
- 1. DEB AOKI UX +content strategy January 12, 2015 SIMPLE SKETCHING FOR INNOVATION examples of storyboards, sketches and explorations in drawing for UX
- 2. HELLO. UX Design +Content Strategy + Comics + Manga Nerd = Deb Aoki
- 4. I LOVE COMICS.I READ COMICS. I DRAW COMICS. • Bento Box in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser 4
- 5. 5 I WRITE ABOUTCOMICS TOO.
- 6. 6 I’VE WORKED INTECHNOLOGY FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS …mostly as a writer.
- 7. 7 Then something interestinghappened while I was at
- 8. My drawing skillscame in handy again. 8
- 9. LET ME TELLYOU A STORY… How I figured out the power of storyboarding for user experience design
- 10. THE CHALLENGE: ebayneeds a new holiday promotion 10 We did a lot of brainstorming, a lot of sketching, and narrowed it down to 4 ideas…
- 11. HOLIDAY CONCEPT 1:group deals 11
- 12. HOLIDAY CONCEPT 2:ebay game 12
- 13. HOLIDAY CONCEPT 3:v.i.p. sales 13
- 14. HOLIDAY CONCEPT 4:group gifts 14
- 15. I WANT TODO THIS IDEA BECAUSE… 15 It’s what’s HOT right now! It’s my idea and it’s the BEST idea! This one’s EASIEST to build! I dunno. Because it’s FUN?
- 16. We put all4 ideas in front of online focus groups in US and UK, and the clear winner was… GROUP GIFTS?! 16 Whuh ? Huh!? Why? Oh wow.
- 17. We were ableto design and market Group Gifts based on comments and suggestions from users from the very start. 17
- 18. This was myfirst hands-on exposure to DESIGN THINKING 18
- 19. STEPS IN DESIGNTHINKING PROCESS 19 Drawing comes in handy in all of these steps of the process!
- 20. Focuses on human needs andconcerns instead of just technology / business needs or limitations Participants / customers feel heard and understood Visuals are memorable and can lead to new insights Drawings are more FUN! and more engaging than just text WHY DRAW PICTURES?
- 21. STUFF I DREWFOR EBAY, CITRIX AND MORE…Storyboards, meeting drawings, brainstorming sessions and more
- 22. SHOW REAL WORLDCONTEXT: Xenmobile storyboard PICTURES > WORDS: 22
- 23. SELL AN IDEA:citrix crystal palace 23
- 24. UNDERSTAND CUSTOMERS: user/stakeholder personas 24 Mobileworkers Managers/ employers Café owners Citrix / GoTo Meeting Designers/PMs/Devs
- 25. SEE THE BIGPICTURE: new hire journey map PICTURES > WORDS: STORYBOARDING AT EBAY 25
- 26. BRAINSTORM IDEAS: customerjourney mapping PICTURES > WORDS: STORYBOARDING AT EBAY 26
- 27. EXPLAIN HOW ITWORKS: ebay green box user flows PICTURES > WORDS: STORYBOARDING AT EBAY 27
- 28. ILLUSTRATE PAIN POINTS:san diego sheriff PICTURES > WORDS: STORYBOARDING AT EBAY 28
- 29. CUSTOMER OVERVIEWS: beforeand after PRESENTATION TITLE GOES HERE 29 “Coolest thing anyone in business has ever done for me!” 40% read/response rate 100% read/response rate
- 30. UNDERSTAND CUSTOMERS: customerinterviews 30
- 31. TELL A STORYTO MAKE A SALE: citrix consulting
- 32. WORKSHOPS: citrix gotomeeting PICTURES > WORDS: STORYBOARDING AT EBAY 32
- 33. CAPTURE KEY POINTS:”write that book” at IFVP PICTURES > WORDS: STORYBOARDING AT EBAY 33
- 34. CAPTURE KEY POINTS:innovation summit PICTURES > WORDS: STORYBOARDING AT EBAY 34
- 35. TEACHING - AllNippon Airways (ANA) 35
- 36. Drawing isn’t alwayspretty, but it works! 36
- 37. Want to seemore examples? 37 http://www.slideshare.net/DebAokihttp://bit.ly/debaokisketches
- 38. QUESTIONS? THANK YOU! EMAIL: DEBAOKI@GMAIL.COM LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debaoki ALSOAT: HTTP://WWW.DEBAOKI.COM
Editor's Notes
- #3 Hi, I'm Deb Aoki. By day, I'm a “senior information experience designer” at Citrix, which is a fancy way of saying that I’m basically a hybrid of a content strategist, a user experience designer, and a storyteller.
- #4 Happy new year!
- #5 But I also have another life: I draw comics. Throughout high school and college, I drew comics for my friends, then for my high school and college newspapers, then for various "alternative" newspapers, then eventually a "mainstream" newspaper, The Honolulu Advertiser, which is now the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. My comic strip Bento Box has been featured in The Advertiser since 1996.
- #6 I'm also a semi-professional nerd. I write about manga (Japanese comics) for Publishers Weekly, Anime News Network, and my own site, MangaComicsManga.com.
- #7 For many years, my day job has been mostly about writing – I've worked at Microsoft/MSN, Ogilvy and Mather, Kaiser Permanente, Disney Store, Citysearch and Art.com, mostly as a web / marketing writer. Drawing was just something fun I did on the side.
- #8 Then in 2007, I started work at eBay. That's where I found out that my super-fun, kinda-nerdy hobby of drawing comics could be useful in my day-to-day work in the user experience design.
- #9 In the process of being a content strategist at eBay, I found myself using drawing more and more to communicate and collaborate with my team members.
- #11 When I worked at eBay, a group of us were given a challenge – come up with a new, exciting holiday promotion to encourage people to do more gift shopping on eBay. We had a one day brainstorming session, which included people from different departments / skills / experience (marketing, design, technology, business development) to come up with ideas. I drew up quick storyboards for each idea on flip-chart paper and we shared them to do an initial gut check to see if these ideas made sense from a user point of view. Our next step: to test it with users.
- #12 Idea 1 – groupon type deal, where people would be encouraged to share the deal with friends, and if enough people bought it, then the price would go down, and continue to go down as more people buy.
- #13 Idea 2 – online “complete the word” game – with each purchase, a buyer would get a “game piece” to complete the word “ebay” to win gift cards and prizes.
- #14 Idea 3 – private sales – frequent buyers would unlock access to exclusive deals after their november/december purchases exceed a set amount.
- #15 Idea 4 – group gifts
- #16 Test a concept – Group Gifts This was part of a series of four concepts for holiday promotions that we put in front of focus groups in the US and UK. Rather than have them look at page mocks, we drew stories that showed real life situations where people would use the product and why. To our surprise, this particular concept, group gifts ended up being the idea that resonated best with users. They could see themselves doing the things shown in the storyboard – that’s something that wouldn’t have been as immediately apparent or understandable to the users if we just showed them a series of page mock-ups.
- #17 Test a concept – Group Gifts This was part of a series of four concepts for holiday promotions that we put in front of focus groups in the US and UK. Rather than have them look at page mocks, we drew stories that showed real life situations where people would use the product and why. To our surprise, this particular concept, group gifts ended up being the idea that resonated best with users. They could see themselves doing the things shown in the storyboard – that’s something that wouldn’t have been as immediately apparent or understandable to the users if we just showed them a series of page mock-ups.
- #18 Thanks to the feedback we got from the user testing we got a few things: Data about the viability of the idea based on actual customer responses – not based on any one person’s desires, personal or professional agenda, or business/technical limitations Early feedback about what users liked / didn’t like about the concept – we used this to address problems ahead of time in our design and programming, and leveraged themes that resonated most favorably to write our marketing copy. We were able to launch the product within 3 months of that initial test
- #19 Thanks to the feedback we got from the user testing we got a few things: Data about the viability of the idea based on actual customer responses – not based on any one person’s desires, personal or professional agenda, or business/technical limitations Early feedback about what users liked / didn’t like about the concept – we used this to address problems ahead of time in our design and programming, and leveraged themes that resonated most favorably to write our marketing copy. We were able to launch the product within 3 months of that initial test
- #20 Thanks to the feedback we got from the user testing we got a few things: Data about the viability of the idea based on actual customer responses – not based on any one person’s desires, personal or professional agenda, or business/technical limitations Early feedback about what users liked / didn’t like about the concept – we used this to address problems ahead of time in our design and programming, and leveraged themes that resonated most favorably to write our marketing copy. We were able to launch the product within 3 months of that initial test
- #21 There are lots of reasons to draw pictures. It helps to focus the attention on human needs and concerns, rather than the technology / business needs or limitations. When I do sketchnoting/graphic facilitation and draw/write what participants say, they feel heard and understood. Visuals are very memorable! And can help spark others creativity It’s more fun – it’s way more engaging to see pictures than just a screen full of text and bulletpoints.
- #23 How it works: XenMobile storyboard For the Fall 2013 release of XenMobile, I worked with the product managers and marketing department to create this 2-page comic strip showing how a user could use the new features in XenMobile. This comic strip was featured on the Citrix Xenmobile website: http://www.citrix.com/products/xenmobile/overview.html
- #24 Sell an idea: Citrix Crystal Palace This was one of three storyboards for a Citrix Labs project that showed different ways that people could use Crystal Palace to share files seamlessly between devices and colleagues. This scenario is an architect. The other scenarios were of a financial planner and a teacher.
- #25 UNDERSTAND CUSTOMERS: user personas - Another way I use sketching is to create quick user personas – to put a face on the different types of people who use a product/service. In this case, this was for CubeFree, an app designed to be used by mobile workers who work from cafes/shared workspaces. Needed to represent the workers, the workers’ managers/employers, the café owners, and the citrix product teams.
- #26 See the big picture and understand high/low points with customer journey mapping This is a diagram of the journey of a new hire at Citrix, from the time they interview to the end of their first year. This map came about after doing talk back sessions with recent hires and with managers, to discuss moments when new hires felt most lost, and when they felt most valued and comfortable. By identifying and communicating these moments this way, we were able to have very productive discussions with various parts of the company that are involved with the new hire onboarding process – human resources, IT, education, recruiting and managers that has lead to taking a more holistic approach to creating a more consistent, less confusing experience for our new employees so they can get up to speed and be productive quickly.
- #27 Brainstorming: customer journey mapping – This is an example of a workshop where I met with various stakeholders from the business, design and technical development groups to map out what the various touch points / stages that a customer would go through as they become aware of Citrix Workspace Services through trying it, then buying it, then installing/troubleshooting it, and then on to being a loyal/happy user of the product (or not). I initially drew the steps on colored post it notes, then refined them onto more finished drawings on index cards, and taped them on a white board to show the steps on a timeline. We used colored dots to indicate happy/unhappy moments and crucial decision points. This allowed us to move steps around, add/remove/edit steps, and later present and discuss them.
- #28 How it works: Green Box Green box is a program where eBay teams up with the USPS to offer sturdy, reusable boxes to sellers that are delivered to the seller, then later returned to the post office, or simply used again. This diagram uses the red boxes to show the seller’s part of the process, the blue boxes illustrate the buyer’s role, and the green arrows and box show the progress of the box. We used this diagram to show at a glance how the product would work at a new product idea fair. The idea won the top prize that year, and was eventually made into a real product at eBay.
- #29 Illustrate pain points: San Diego Sherriff Our research department went to shadow officers in San Diego, and saw that they encountered numerous problems while using our mobile apps. These scenarios helped our engineers to understand why certain changes to our user flows were needed.
- #30 Customer Interview sketchnotes – We started doing these at our Citrix tradeshows and at meetings in our Executive Briefing Center in Santa Clara, and got great results from customers and sales people. It helped to reinforce the message that Citrix is focused on customer experience, and understanding our customers needs. It also helped our sales people understand our customers better, and find opportunities to customize their pitches. It’s easy to digest, very appealing to look at, and the customer feels really special, that this sort of effort was made to listen to them.
- #31 Understanding Customers – Here’s one page of a sketch I did with another customer, Infosys. Infosys had been having problems rolling out XenMobile to their users, but was having a hard time getting the right people at Citrix to take their concerns seriously. This is 1 page in a 5 page story that was based off interviews with 3 executives at Infosys. This story was widely shared in our sales organization, and lead to many productive changes in our mobile products.
- #32 Selling with stories – Citrix Consulting This was from a workshop I taught to Citrix Sales Engineers about how to draw on a whiteboard to sell Citrix Consulting Services to their customers. It allows for discussion and input from customers. Right column is your space to have a conversation w/ your customer, talk about a customized set of solutions for your customer. Notice how the blue is used for customers, black is for citrix and for most important words / phrases
- #33 Workshop: Citrix GoTo Meeting This was from a workshop held at the Citrix San Francisco offices, where the GoTo Meeting teams were trying to figure out solutions for some of their recurring problems. I’d listen in and summarize what the participants were saying, and created a visual document that summarized a lot of the key points that could be easily referred to after the workshop.
- #34 Summarize Key Points – Write that book! This was a live capture of a talk by Donna George, a graphic facilitation professional who gave a talk about writing and self-publishing your own books at the IFVP conference in Austin, Texas in July 2015
- #35 Capture Key Points: Innovation Summit 2015 This was from the Innovation Summit held in Seattle in January 2015, with design thinking leaders from Nordstrom, JetBlue, Citrix and Fidelity
- #36 Teaching – ANA / All Nippon Airways I also teach classes and give presentations about my drawing for UX work. I like to teach others how to use visuals to collaborate quickly, think creatively, understand customers, and test out ideas quickly and inexpensively. I’ve taught this class at Google, University of Washington Continuing Education, Future University in Hakodate, and World Innovation Lab in Palo Alto.
- #37 The examples I show today are mostly “pretty” finished examples, but a lot of the drawing I do is just quick and simple, and sometimes quite messy. But it communicates quickly, and that’s what counts!
- #38 I’m on SlideShare and Flickr