2.Presentation of Issue/Need/Requirement
• Define the problem you want solved clearly, and lay out any criteria to be met.

3.Individual Activity
• Allows people to articulate their individual ideas

4.Group Activity
•Share ideas and allows to new possibilities to open up

5.Present the Idea

Effective group brainstorming session:

•Keep the session focused on the problem.
•Ensure that no one criticizes or evaluates ideas during the session.
•Encourage an enthusiastic, uncritical attitude among members of the group.
•Encourage everyone to come up with as many ideas as possible, from solidly practical ones to wildly impractical ones.
•Ensure that no train of thought is followed for too long.
•Encourage people to develop other people’s ideas, or to use other ideas to create new ones.
•Appoint one person to note down ideas that come out of the session.

This post was submitted by Dolly Parikh.

Method: Brain Storming
Pre-requirements: Need + Audience definition
People in the room: Stake-holder, project implementation team and everyone available
Tools: While Board, Sticky-notes, note-taker

The stake-holder presents the need and the pain points to the group. The stake holder also presents whom does this solution address. Input in gathered from everyone in the room irrespective of the role/title. Ideas can be grouped based on affinity mapping and those can be further refined by the project team.

Project team can prototype various ideas and test them and then further refine them to come to a solution.

Tools for further refinement and prototyping can be different for different groups and projects.

ConvergentDivergent.pdf (227 KB)

This post was submitted by Dolly Parikh.

Method:
1. You want to write the steps for where the user starts from and what is the goal of the user and of the product.

2. You want to start with the most common case or the “happy path” e.g. Step 1. User comes to abc.com
Step 2. User clicks on …
Step 3. User fills up …
Step 4. User reviews …
Step 5. User completes …

3. Your “happy path” flow is ready

4. Now take your other use cases and then build up the requirements or features for each area without messing up with the “happy path” flow

5. Ensure you have covered all the cases.

This will allow you to identify the task based flows for all use cases. You can optimize on the flow by reviewing it with your cross-functional team. Be open to their suggestions.

This post was submitted by Dolly Parikh.

The technique is rooted in ethnography and is a vital skill for designer to have. Ideally work like this is interdisciplinary and designers work with ethnographers who spend years studying this stuff.

It is important to make the participant feel as comfortable as possible and view the interview like a chat. Recording information is important but it is a better idea to do this afterwards. A dictaphone can be used but must not make the participant feel nervous or uncomfortable, and have an effect of holding back information.

This method provides rich observations and insights into people’s lives and helps to build stories around them. The method can uncover insights that could not of been hypothesized and requires an open mind to accept findings.

Contextual interviews often take place during the early stages of the design process, and are conducted with a range of different participants relevant to the field of study. The results are then used in later stages of the design process, potentially to generate personas or built into a workshop to facilitate further discussion. The results build a basic grounding of knowledge and understanding of who is being designed for and forms a basis for the project.

interviewingsubpostmaster_c.jpg (119 KB)

This post was submitted by sarahdrummond.

The method is typically used when describing new service offerings. By using various actors to move through a marked out environment, aided by paper prototypes, designers can share a similar vision of how a new service might work, and open up this process to stakeholder and user groups involved in the project.

It can allow a discussion between designers, front end users and staff to occur, spotting where there might be problems, or can leave designers with more insights.

By mixing up different stories and personas in testing out scenarios, designers can often come away with new insights into user needs.

This technique can be used throughout the service design process to map out existing services, understand complex infrastructures and relationships between users, staff and systems and visually depict in a common language for everyone, new service ideas.

On top of this, it creates simple images that explain a service and can later be implemented into a storyboard.

The image included, is from PO Box and shows the method being used to map relationships and people’s journeys between villages in rural locations to spot opportunities for new service ideas.

desktopwalkthrough.jpg (87 KB)

This post was submitted by sarahdrummond.

Unlike observational work it allows research to be conducted with minimal influence by the designer, allowing some would argue a purer set of results than direct user engagement work.

Packs contain instructions and engaging tasks that will encourage the user to remember and want to use it.

After an agreed period of time, packs are handed back to the designer and results are analysed, which can lead to the creation of other tools like personas based on a deeper understanding of people and their environments.

Packs normally take on a very visual element, often including cameras and a place to record details of the image and the emotional feeling behind it. Packs are good at getting to grips with an empathic understanding of someone over a period of time.

Sometimes on completion, an interview or review session is conducted between the participant and designer to question further about the results of the pack.

I.e A pack was given to commuters in Edinburgh to document their journey to work to gain a deeper understanding of what this looked like and how people felt at the different stages of it. Participants were then brought back to the studio to discuss the results and pinpoint key problems in the bus service.

probekit.jpg (147 KB)

This post was submitted by sarahdrummond.

The method involves teaching research participants new skills to capture insights for you about the field or environment you are studying in.

For example, participants can be taught to use video cameras and given a task to record their routines, or interview people in their surroundings to achieve a deeper understanding of the research participant’s world.

This post was submitted by sarahdrummond.

We tend to do this via webconferences, where people can talk to eachother, share visuals and add more content via chat. However if you can’t get all people together at the same time you can of course run an eThink via e-mail, Twitter or other social networking environments. That way, participants do not need to be present at the same time and at the same place. When a brainstorm session involves people from various sites and localities, the electronic version becomes even more valuable as it eliminates travel time and expense. All ideas are recorded electronically so they won’t be forgotten, and they can be thought about at any time.

Although face-to-face can bring obvious advantages, a virtual environment can be beneficial too and encourage people to focus more on the creative task at hand, and less on the personal and social aspects of the interaction.

Also, individuals can sometimes have a tendency to put less effort into a group project than they would if they were working independently. For instance, some people feel more comfortable offering an idea only after they have had the time to think it through. Meetings usually have the pressure of time hovering over them and therefore certain ideas that came up during the meeting, will not be forthcoming. eThinks can help people formulate their ideas in their own time.

This post was submitted by Julia Schaeper.

Requirements || Results from qualitative interviews, contextual inquiry or questionnaire guided interviews are necessary.

Approach || Storytelling is a certain retelling technique where each (contextual inquiry and questionnaire guided-) interview is retelled from the point of the interviewee. The lively representation of the story, which is supplemented by photos, videos and quotes supports the active listening and makes the attendees internalize the knowledge. During storytelling the most important data is kept on post-its which are structured afterwards. When all interviews are finished the post-its are clustered again and core titles are given to each of them. Beyond Post-Its other methods can complement this method like flow diagrams, sequence models or the like.

Next Steps || Using creativity techniques in the conceptual design phase allows the project team to create innovations from the gained knowledge.

This post was submitted by D-LABS GmbH.

Requirements || First design drafts and a conceptual interaction design are necessary to create a meaningful prototype. Furthermore a technology review is advised to ensure feasibility and sustainability of the product.

Approach || While defining key interactions, important functionality is implemented by the interface development department in close collaboration with interaction designers. This way a first impression is created of how the future interface looks and feels like and users can interact with the prototype.

Next Steps || Evaluating the experience prototype can complement the finalization of the interaction design. Parts of the experience prototype can be incorporated into a high fidelity prototype.

This post was submitted by D-LABS GmbH.