The importance of being unplugged
We’re all tied to our screen. With our laptops and portable devices following us everywhere, the norms of business and personal etiquette have struggled to keep up.
Our vernacular has changed as well, putting words to concepts or situations undreamt of even a decade ago. A recent article in the Toronto Star introduced me to the term “Phubbing” which they defined in the article as “a hybrid of phone and snubbing — describes when a person ignores or fails to be present with another because they are engaging with their smart phone.”
We’ve all been in meetings when the clacking of keys on a laptop does not seem to relate to the words spoken. When the clacking continues into silences or pauses, this can present the speaker with a dilemma: She can wait until the audience catches up, berate them for not paying attention, or continue over the noise. We’ve also seen heads down discrete use of smart devices at the table which is anything but discrete.
User Experience Designers live and breathe interaction with a variety of devices on a daily basis. They design for them, they use them, they tie most of their lives into their use. But using a device does not make one a great Designer for the same. Becoming a Designer takes skills development that often do not involve devices at all.
We use Post-it notes, Sharpies, note pads, whiteboards or whiteboard walls on a regular basis, but there are both good and less effective ways of doing this.
When I facilitate Design Thinking workshops I look for anti patterns in the exercises to ensure the outcomes are aligned with the problem. But I also look at the body language of the participants during the day. I look for post-its from a group with only one person’s handwriting, I look for people sitting down when others are standing. I look for people standing apart from the group, confused faces and, yes, I look for smart devices.
There are times when distractions should be minimized and focus on the problem needs to be maintained. Whether the outcome is professional or educational, one thing I have learned has been that smart devices and laptops should be set aside when you need to engage with people, collaborate on your feet and take part effectively.
And I feel there is no more important time to do this than when building or trying to strengthen a team.
That’s where Designers Unplugged came in.
Designers Unplugged is the name we gave to a seemingly unrelated and random series of learning, speaking, sketching, and team building events in our IBM Studio in downtown Toronto. It came out of a team building discussion wherein we identified that getting our Designers away from their devices, and up from their desks, was a priority on a regular basis.
People were working hard, they were new to the team, the company, and to each other. They wanted to show they were dedicated, hard working, effective. They were also siloed, working in small squads on various products or components of larger products. We wanted to foster an environment that encouraged cross collaboration, mentoring, organizational teamwork and support from all sides so that no one felt isolated.
And so it began with the Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge, which I discovered through this TED talk:
Luckily for me, most of the team had never done it before as its greatest impact is for first time participants. Also, since we were a newly hired and predominantly early career professional team of researchers, UX, UI and front-end Designers, it was great chance to foster some team building moments.
After that successful first event, my challenge was to come up with a series of monthly or bi-monthly 1 to 2 hour events which we set up to get all the Designers to stand up, move out of their comfort zones, learn new things, and relate to each other in new ways, forging stronger team bonds. At first it was easy. We held events that covered such topics as:
- Holiday themed brainstorming or story telling (spoken)
- Public speaking focusing on improv and body language
- Data visualization using materials found in a Dollar Store (a favourite)
- Basic drawing skills for storytelling
- A craft making “bring your own supplies” pot luck style event
- Photographic skills development, followed by themed photo walks and slideshows of the results
- And we created a Jeopardy game for Designers where arguments over who buzzed first (was it the rubber chicken or the cow bell?) were harder to answer than the questions.
In truth, it has been hard to keep up the pace — we’ve often gone months without an event and most of the conflicts were due to business requirements — but when we do have them, they make us wonder why we don’t hold them more often.
It can get quiet in the office while we work, but an unplugged session generates laughter, talk, energy and excitement. I’ve found a few team members avoided the public speaking themed events, so I have learned I should be more ambiguous with the event titles. Feedback has been mostly positive with some of our designers saying they liked “Being able to sketch and have time away from the computer.” and “Being able to do something creative in a group but not under pressure.”
To scale this to other Studios we have started creating standard decks for presentations, providing facilitator notes, verbiage for invitations and we try to always collect feedback after every event.
Survey your participants before they leave
I would suggest that you end each event by inviting the participants to — finally — pull their smartphones out and navigate to a shortened URL you provide and answer a short survey about their experience before they leave the room!
We ask 3 simple questions:
First: Using an NPS scale we ask them to rate the session from 0 to 10 by answering the following: How likely are you to recommend this session of Designers Unplugged to a friend or colleague?
We then ask them to answer, in words:
- What was the high point of your experience?
- How can we improve this event for next time?
This has provided valuable feedback for refining the events for later use and in developing ideas for future events.
If you are still not sure you can run with this, ask yourself: What are you doing to get your teams — of any discipline — out of their seats, collaborating and learning in new ways? How are they developing their soft skills and forging new bonds within your organization that will help them work more effectively?
If you aren’t doing anything, try unplugging.
David Williams is a Studio Manager at IBM based in Toronto. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
