Great Wide Open - Design Studio Methodology

Jacklyn Burgan // @playfulpixel
Design Studio
Methodology

True Fact:
• The vast majority of projects fail NOT because they
couldn’t build a great product using the latest new
technology.
• They failed because they built something no one
wanted.

Let’s start with an
exercise!
2 minutes

Why Are We Here?
• All too often, leaders, managers, teams, designers rely
on common approaches that may work well in one
context, and fail in another.
• Teams want to create better customer experiences (user
experiences), but aren’t sure what that really means.
• Teams often ﬁnd it diﬃcult moving from insights to action
(based on this research, what should we do now?).

Why Collaborative
Design?
“Ninja. Rockstar. Gifted genius. Many of the ways we talk
about creative work (whether it’s design or development)
only capture the brilliance of a single individual.”
- Stefan Kloeck

Traditional Process
Discover Deﬁne Design Develop Deploy

Discover
• Gather information
• Brainstorming
• Competitive analysis
• Deﬁne the project scope
• UX deliverables: personas + user scenarios

Define
• Developing interaction model or UI framework
• Define the content + functionality requirements
• Define information architecture
• Create a project plan
• UX deliverables: product requirement document

Design
• Create paper prototype / sketches
• Usability evaluation
• Create wireframes
• Visual design explorations
• Visual design approval
• UX deliverables: sitemap, user ﬂows, wireframes + UI

Develop
• Architecture design
• UML diagram / class
diagram
• Daily scrum
• Code iteration cycles
• Interim installers
• Release management
• Unit testing
• Code refactoring
• Documentation
• UX deliverables: No key
UX deliverables at this
stage.

Deploy
• Use cases
• Test cases
• Testing
• Regression testing
• Test reports
• Build releases

“Traditional” UX Practices
• Emphasize deliverables
• See the work as a solution that gets sold to  
stakeholders
• See the (UX) designer as the hero in charge of ﬁnding
solutions to design challenges and getting approval
before development starts

How Can We Improve Our
Process?
• The design work we do is often limited to on-the-go type
of decisions
• We struggle with approvals
• We don’t have an established process that  
involves UXD, thus our scenario is not “going from
traditional UX to Lean”, but rather, “establishing our
approach to UXD”

The “Traditional” Way
(Waterfall + Waterfall or Waterfall + Agile)
1. Have a great idea
2. Wireframe
3. Designer creates a static  
mockup
4. Static mockup & specs are thrown to devs to
implement, QA to test  
The Collaborative Way
(Lean UX + Agile Development)
1. Have a great idea
2. Sketch together
3. Engage team (BA, UX, Dev, QA) to build a prototype
4. Play, tweak, rinse, repeat
5. Once UX is nailed have a visual designer polish to
perfection
Integrating Design into
Development Process

Design Studio

Create. Pitch. Critique.

It’s about generating many
safe-to-fail experiments,
not highly rendered
solutions.

All ideas must map to a
person’s goals & needs.

Design Studio
• Generate lots of design concepts (options*)
• Present concepts as stories
• Critique using Ritual Dissent
• Integrate (steal) & Iterate
• Check stories for coherence
• Converge around testable solution hypotheses
*See Chris Matts Real Options Theory

Design Studio
• Level playing ﬁeld.
• Idea generation.
• Team buy-in.
• Ownership/investment.
• Vet design concepts.

Set A Timer

CREATE. Pitch. Critique.
Create 6-8 concept sketches individually.

Line, Square, Circle, Triangle

Focus on the bare minimum

All ideas must map to
person’s goals & needs.

Create. PITCH. Critique.
3 minutes to pitch how your concept solves the problem.

Create. Pitch. CRITIQUE.
2 minutes for critique.
2-3 ways it solves the problem and one 1-2 opportunities for
improvement.

Larry
“If I only had a photographic memory I wouldn’t
need a shopping list.”
Larry is a 32 year old engineer that works for a major corporation
building large-scale desktop applications. When he’s not in the oﬃce,
he spends most of his time building side projects like mobile and web
apps. Because Larry is always working on the next idea, he often forgets
to make a list of items he needs from the grocery store and when he
goes to make dinner, he doesn’t have the right ingredients to cook with.

Ready?

Create.
5 minutes.

Pitch.
[pick a time keeper]
3 minutes.

Critique.
2 minutes.

2nd Iteration!

3rd Iteration!

Create 1 Solution.
10 minutes.

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another
mind than the one where they sprang up.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Team Sketch.
1 concept
25 minutes.

Ritual Dissent.

Ritual Dissent.
• The basic approach involves a spokesperson presenting
a series of ideas to a group of investors who listen to
them in silence.
• Your spokesperson will only have 5 minutes to present.
• Team must imagine they are a group of investors hearing
a pitch from a startup.

Ritual Dissent.
• The spokesperson turns to face the wall, so that their
back is to the investor team and listens in silence while
the group attacks the idea.  
• The spokesperson cannot respond to questions or
defend the ideas.

“Whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as
hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it.”
- Karl Popper

Present.
Pick a spokesperson
5 minutes to prepare

For all critique decide:
• Ignore (backburner)
• Remove (de-solve)
• Research Solution (best practice)
• Research Problem (innovate)

Iterate as a team based on
the critique.
15 minutes
Then pitch to the whole workshop.

But ﬁrst…
Rip Up Your Designs.

Team Sketch.
1 concept
15 minutes.

Team Presentations.
3 minutes.

Ritual Assent.
2 minutes.

Tips For Running This At
Your Workplace.
•Timebox: 5 minutes sketch / 5 minutes per person
•No more than 6 or 7 people per table (4 is best)
•Don’t introduce too many business rules up front
•Imagine no technology constraints
•Make explicit all potential channels (not just mobile or web)*
•Move people from team to team to prevent premature
convergence
•Don’t serve turkey sandwiches

Potential Pitfalls
•Having a solution before Design Studio starts – “we already
have a solution – we just want buy-in”
•Not adequately scoping Design Studio to match the problem –
“we can only spend 2 hours on Design Studio because of
people’s schedules”
•Introducing blockers or business constraints too early
•The invisible hand of the absent stakeholder

Maximize Optionality
•From insights, you can create multiple problem & solution
hypotheses sets.
•It's not about designing the one right solution and reﬁning.
•It's about testing many solutions to multiple problem
hypotheses.
•It's about many small bets.

Some Ideas for Good
Product Design
•Create a balanced team
•Design + PM + Development = One Team
•Externalize thought process
•Flow: Think > Make > Check
•Research to understand problem space
•No proxies between customers and team
•Generative ideation: it’s about optionality
•Formulate many small tests & measure outcome

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