Only facts (put your own thoughts in brackets)
This! (As said by one of the Deloitte Digital Connect (DDC) Team in today’s user testing session). Without a doubt this has been the toughest bit of the DDC Programme now nearing its final stages as we start our ‘paper prototypes’ (grab a napkin, sketch out your design and show it to your users for feedback).
As I reflect back on my initial user interviews back in January and the joy of deep listening I felt deeply at the time, this deep listening felt like a shift for me.
A shift as to how I often engage in solutions through my work (usually with my own napkin solution in my back pocket) while trying to do the deep listening.
The DDC programme encouraged and challenged me to really put users fully front and centre of the discover phase.
It felt deep and profound hearing users talk in heartfelt ways of their journey into volunteering. Their feedback opened my eyes to the importance of safety cues as people with lived experience of mental health navigated volunteer databases, websites, job fairs, volunteer centres in their pursuit of something meaningful, fulfilling and giving back to their community.
But then people struck systems, processes and forms, used, perhaps for years and years without users at the heart of their development (because we never used to build things in this way).
For many they gave up, stepped sideways, only engaged in charities that offered different processes.
On the 28th March I gathered a few people in a room and they told me in glaring, exposing detail how our volunteer advert made them feel. How uninviting, cold and clinical it felt. How they would be turned off applying because this didn’t look or feel like a safe place to volunteer.
Yet, despite this insight as I sat down to look at the data from this workshop and identify our ideas to take forward to prototype stage I came up with my own interpretation of what was said. I didn’t put my thoughts in brackets. I did what my sub-concious and years of working in HR and my project management training has taught me. I thought to myself — I ultimately know what the right solution is here, I am closer to the practical realities of the organisation and well….I just know better.
Then as I sat listening to my peers and experts who do this day in and day out from Deloitte and CAST, I realised I had dropped into my old way of thinking.
So I went back to the data and I looked again, I listened and saw the feelings on the page. I put (my thoughts) in brackets and I pulled out their ideas, my colleague’s ideas (who is far wiser than me at listening) and I started with what users wanted to see being done differently.
This is what is on the napkin now as I get ready to take our idea back to users in a few weeks to get their take on what I hope will feel like an inviting, welcoming, warm volunteer advert that they’ll want to apply to.
I’m sure this won’t be the last time I drop into old ways of thinking and I’m very grateful for the supportive network of people who can gently re-orient me back to user centred design because maybe, just maybe it will encourage more people to take up volunteering.
