UX DESIGNER: HOW DESIGN THINKING MAKES YOU MORE EFFECTIVE
This June, at the annual E1 event in Toulon, France, I gave a talk on user experience.
And once again thanks a lot http://kevinpardo.com/ and Jean-Charles Philip to think about me for this great conferences
I’m a UX Designer turned Design Thinking workshop facilitator.
We’ve all been hearing more and more talk about Design Thinking, so when E1 organizers saw my profile, they asked me to give a talk about both my experience in the field, and my thoughts regarding this new approach to business. The objective would be to show UX Designers how Design Thinking can be used in their own projects, both decreasing friction and shortening the development timeframe.
In this article, I’ll share more about that very subject.
How I got started as a UX Designer
In 2012, after having worked for several companies, I launched my freelance business, UX Design.
Like most freelancers, I worked from home. I only met with my clients at key stages to take stock of the progress I was making on their projects.
I didn’t have up-to-the-minute contact with my clients, which meant I didn’t have 100% of the information. So, based on my own business ideas, I made assumptions about what users would think of a certain application, and about the production capabilities of my clients’ tech teams…
I used a standardized process to integrate my work with the client’s brief before rollout and approval. But my process never worked…
I encountered four main problems:
- Holding meetings was time lost for everyone
- Structures of briefings were inconsistent
- User approval came before launching the product. #decodewaste
And there were other problems:
- The plan would change because of unforeseen factors, such as the addition of someone with new expertise, or because of new information or objectives, or when an informal discussion gave rise to a new goal
- Approval of each phase would require a long delay
- There needed to be a complementary track before approval of the project was possible
- Or worse: the client would stop working on the project when another “more strategic” project appeared to be more important
These factors meant the process could take weeks, and it was difficult to know the start and end date of a project.
Moreover, like most freelancers, I worked on several projects at the same time. It was up to me to manage my workload and move from one project to another…meeting with users in the morning, networking in the afternoon, production in the evening…
My Challenge
In 2015, I decided to take a week of vacation to go surfing with friends. Among them was Mélissa Aldana, who, a few months later, would become my co-founder.
That week was filled with new, inspiring people, and plenty of conversation. During moments of reflection, when we got our heads out of the waves, we talked about our work practices. Our work wasn’t always adapted to the actual needs of companies, we thought. Now were we always up-to-date with product marketing. We wondered whether processes we had learned in school and at work actually slowed down our projects, rather than making them thrive.
We also realized that over the past 20 years both workplace challenges and the ways people work have seen radical changes. Connectivity and digital technology have ushered us into a new era of data and service. Today, it is necessary to be even faster and more agile than it once was. Product launch simply doesn’t happen the same way today that it did 50 years ago.
I came to the realization that, by being a freelancer and by using the classical production model, I was actually slowing my clients progress rather than helping them to develop speed and efficiency. This had to change.
Discovering Design Thinking
“Start small, think big, grow fast.” This is a well-known motto in the start-up world. Start-ups seem to be born overnight. Those that are successful have a vision that is long-term. They are agile, and they develop ideas that make them indispensable to users.
Mélissa and I had worked with startups from both inside and outside, so we were well familiar with their situations. We became more and more passionate about their modes of operation. We identified four principal elements of their success:
- respond quickly
- reduce energy waste
- use empathy and know how to really test a hypothesis before approving it
- don’t lose sight of the company’s possibilities
Using this method, start-ups create products that are user-aligned and adapted to survive in today’s economy.
At this point, we decided to hack the method I had been using in order to create a new one.
To do this, we identified each of the old method’s pain points. Addressing these, we developed a method that can support a company’s speed and flexibility much more fluidly.
This wasn’t a brand-new invention. We simply drew from the methodologies that inspired us: Design Thinking, Design Sprint, Lean Startup, and Growth Hacking. We used the best elements of each of these to create a new way: the method.
Now we use the method exclusively. Every project is conceived a co-creation workshop. The idea is to have every person involved, working through the maximum number of phases in the shortest possible timeframe.
These are the four foundational principals of the method:
1. Collective intelligence: put every participant at the table at the same time, so no one is left out from interactions with the project’s decision makers
2. Short deadline: avoid downtime and focus on what’s truly necessary
3. Put the user and those impacted by the project at the center of thinking to ensure that the project is realistic and feasible, both technically and legally
4. Rapid prototyping: test and approve hypotheses before launching anything in development
What are the necessary skills to be able to organize this kind of workshop?
In my opinion, a UX designer doesn’t have to acquire loads of new skills to get started. In fact, she already possesses skills that she can put to use in a workshop. She might:
- Demonstrate neutrality with regard to the project (the UX designer often comes from outside of the business and is not a part of the technical vision)
- Introduce a strong user vision (the UX designer is often the user’s primary ambassador to the company)
Moreover, thanks to breakthroughs in work methods, interested designers now have more time available for facilitating workshops. (Think of tools such as Template UI, Sketch, Invision for rapid prototyping, and Zeplin for design documentation.)
The new facilitator may need to develop some new skill sets, such as:
- Handle upstream workshop preparation
- Improvise
- Refrain from influencing the group
- Craft statements
- Adhere to the timeframe
- Address roadblocks
- Concretize everything
- Management discussion time
- Motivate people through compressed work periods
How can these skills be developed?
The most effective way to develop skills is to participate in workshops, and to practice as a secondary, or supporting, facilitator. Our meetups are a great way to get this kind of experience.
For people who are highly motivated and ready to change their methods — not only UX Designers, but also project managers and consultants — we are also doing more and more training through our 2-day training in Design Thinking. You can find upcoming training dates on our website.
Get started as a facilitator with Magiklap
To help get you started as a Design Thinking facilitator, Klap created Magiklap. This how-to guide will walk you through Design Thinking, and get you on your way to being a facilitator.
There’s nothing magical about Magiklap. It simply teaches you the best collective intelligence management tools, integrated and optimized, so that whether you’re a consultant, a project manager, designer, or developer, you can solve business challenges easily using Design Thinking.
You’ll learn:
- The method
- The facilitator’s role
- How to prepare a workshop
- The 5 basic tools to use through each phase along with printable templates
This guide is Klap’s gift to you. Download it now sorry it is in french, if I receive 50 comments who ask me to translate I promise, I will do :).
