Weekly updates (2019–07–05)

Introducing NEXT Labs, Sponsor super powers, new tasks & templates, and more!

4 min readJul 8, 2019

Selecting deliverables

Phase-end deliverables start in “Draft” mode until you’ve worked on them enough. Once complete, they turn to “Ready” at which point users are able to select them. Instead of hiding the select option while in “Draft” mode, we now consistently show the option, but disable it until the deliverable is Ready.

New templates for tasks

Tasks in NEXT come with videos, templates, or cheat sheets to make task execution easier — e.g. the User Interview task offers guidelines for scripts and question types.

This week, we refreshed many of the existing templates and added two completely new templates (Empathy Map and Brain Sketching). Additionally, all templates are now consistently shown above the instructions in the task learning view.

Add or create users from theme

Theme Owners or Admin users can now manage Theme Owners. They can add existing users to a theme, or even add and invite new users from within the about-tab of a theme.

Theme owners can manage North Stars

Managing a Theme’s North Star used to be difficult, as only Admin-users were able to manage and edit it.

From now on, all Theme owners can edit and manage their North Star by themselves in the about-tab of their Theme. Note that Admin users continue to have overarching rights to edit and manage any Theme.

Adding Challenge to Canvas

Each phase in the NEXT process has a specific deliverable, which shows up in the Canvas once you’ve selected it. However, the deliverable of the Brief phase (i.e. Challenge), did not have a dedicated place yet.

Last week we revisited this inconsistency. From now on, when you select the Challenge you’ve developed during the Brief phase, it will show up in the Canvas in the “Problem”-section. As you progress through the process and create your Creative Question, your problem will continuously be enriched and adjusted in the Canvas accordingly. Underneath your deliverable in the canvas, it will indicate whether it’s showing the “Challenge” or, when further down the process, the “Creative Question”.

Export your Brief to PowerPoint

At NEXT, we believe digital tools augment physical interaction, not replace them. NEXT encourages teams to engage in face-to-face phase-end meetings to discuss the progress of projects and make decisions. To facilitate this, we provide an export to PowerPoint function for Personas, Solutions, or the entire Canvas. Now, you can export Briefs too. Click “Export” in the Brief page to export it to PowerPoint.

Now available: NEXT Labs

To accelerate the adoption of NEXT as a way of working, we launched NEXT Labs. By means of guided tutorials, NEXT Labs provide hands-on experience for teams, sponsors and internal champions.

Labs guide users through the process of getting started with a project (teams), a theme (sponsor), and the NEXT way of working (champions). Labs cover a wide range of topics and we’ll continuously add new ones.

Go to https://labs.nextapp.co/ to get started!

New Task in Brief: Challenge Framing

Challenge Framing — a new task designed to help teams create their initial challenge. Augmented with a template canvas, it helps teams formulate their project challenge in a structured manner, without having to go out in the wild. It will also help sharpen the team’s goal and avoid any misconceptions of the challenge in the team. This is a great task to prepare for the “Sponsor Interview”.

Setting Sprint Length

We encourage teams to work in an agile manner, as we believe it fits better to the dynamic nature of innovation. Essentially, this means working in fixed-length sprints (e.g. Weekly or Monthly).

From now on, NEXT helps you plan and schedule these Sprints right from within the Brief phase. Simply open your Brief workspace and set the Sprint Length to your preferred interval. Your selection here will set the default view in the Sprint tab of the project.

Sponsor Cheat Sheet

Sponsors play an essential role in successful business design initiatives. To help Sponsors and teams stay focused on what really matters, we created a Sponsor Cheat Sheet — a one-pager outlining their main tasks and responsibilities. You can download it directly from your Theme.