UX Workshop: Ideation using Important/Urgent Matrix
Hi! I’m Krizia, Founder and Lead Product Designer at Femmecubator, an online mentorship community for Women of Color in Tech. Our team of volunteers have hit the ground running on building our first web app and I plan to start blogging here to share our process and thinking behind it.
We envision a mentorship platform that provides a way for women to connect with mentors based on their availability. In the ideation phase, 4 UX volunteers brainstormed the mentor side of the app, by identifying and connecting it to the needs of the end user (mentee) side.
What has been done so far for the mentee side? Just for context, these are the user scenarios that addressed the goals of the “mentee” persona:
We have also created initial wireframes that addressed the following need:
- mentees are able to view directory of mentor bios
- mentees are able to book time with mentors based on their available schedule
- mentees are able to search mentors by skills and industry
Now that we know what our end users need, we can plan for the mentor’s journey. One of the problem we are trying to solve is this: How do mentors manage appointments? To be specific, the user (mentors) needs a way to create, view, edit, delete or reschedule appointments.
From this statement, we can keep reframing the problem by using the How Might We method:
HMW design an easy and simple experience of managing appointments?
HMW design an MVP app that allows a communication method between a mentor and mentees?
HMW design a dashboard for mentors to manage their tasks?
Working with the UX team, we workshopped the mentor’s dashboard that will contain appointments and other important information.
WORKSHOP TYPE:
Important/Urgent Design Sprint (1 hour); Team members: 4 ; Tools: Miro, Zoom + Slack
Process:
STEP 1: Create a simple prompt for your workshop. I usually begin by sharing the problem statement.
Begin ideation by framing the problem into different use cases:
STEP 2: The team broke out into two groups and started ideating the mentor’s journey of managing appointments by creating different user stories in post-its. I recommend using the breakout room feature on zoom, where the facilitator leads the screenshare and capture the team collab’ing on the Miro board).
STEP 3: we proceeded to voting on what we think is important and urgent (green) then important but not urgent (red).
STEP 4: We prioritized the user stories using the Important / Urgent matrix
Results:
- Team alignment on MVP requirements. As a team, we were able to align our decision-making process in trimming down what is essential to be included in the MVP
- Staying in the problem space. Getting into the habit of thinking about users through multiple user scenarios. We were able to focus on user needs and goals (problem space), before jumping straight into designing wireframes (solution space)
- Bitesized design thinking process. Any design sprint activity is a good way to let our creativity flow. Plus points as it also encourages collaboration with your team!
Look our for upcoming progress on this project next week!
