How we kept Innovation going during lockdown
Innovation is for Everyone
As Experience Designers, we are privileged in our role to get to experiment and work on our ideas. Our passion is in finding better ways to deliver content experiences to our customers. For us, innovation is in the smallest things we do, and in the everyday objects, we design and build.
Of course, new ideas do not exclusively come from Experience Designers, and sometimes it is hard to get the time to explore and think around the bigger, more gnarly challenges that don’t fall into daily work.
So, earlier this year, we gave “Innovation” some space and ran a collaborative event with nearly 100 people across the business, to capture their challenges and big ideas. These challenges and ideas covered commercial objectives, customer pain-points, ways of working and culture.
Our next step was to take these into sprints. In multi-skilled teams in Bristol and London, we would ideate and develop Proof of Concepts from which to build business cases.
Then Covid-19 happened.
A different world
Suddenly, the week we were launching our sprints, we were all at home and busily adapting to this new and remote world. In honesty, it was a bit of a bummer.
But, we were not going to give up, and to keep momentum on the challenges and ideas we had captured, we needed to adapt and lean up our approach quickly. We would be remote, independent and take a less structured approach to the way we would work. This was exciting!
Working to our strengths
As Experience Designers, we have the frameworks to think around big problems. The ability to utilise Experience Design techniques, that take you from problem statement to outcome-driven solutions, meant we had people who could get on with it and keep innovation going. In setting up, we streamlined our teams and put in a light framework:
- Small teams — 6 Teams of 3 made up of 1 UX Designer, 1 UI Designer and 1 Product Manager.
- Briefing — light briefing packs supplied for each round (Ideation and Discovery).
- Self-organising — given 2-weeks to present back, the activities and time spent in between the briefing session and the presentation, was up to the team. This was to fit around the day job!
- Collaborative — teams invited collaborators from data, development, and any other area of the business to validate and improve on ideas.
- Check-ins — a facilitator on hand to support as needed.
- Results — an internal website publishing the challenge, ideas, outcomes, status and results.
We also quickly embraced (and became expert in!) online tools for collaboration.
What we did
Step 1: Ideation
- Briefing the Challenges — the problem to solve and the positive impact solving this could have on the business and users/customers
- Ideation — rapid and collaborative sketching and storyboarding with voting run by the teams
- Presentation — presenting winning ideas back to all teams (in chosen style) for feedback and voting
Step 2: Discovery
- Mini-Discovery — augment best ideas through internal and external research.
- Changes to make from Ideation stage feedback
- Further input from stakeholders
- Prototype and validation with customers/end users/tech
- Proposed next step
2. Presentations — presenting back the outcome.
The discoveries would tell the teams if their ideas had wings, or not. It was up to them to say where they would take them.
- Do it? — here’s something we could get done now
- Build on it? — here’s something we need to work on
- Kill it? — this didn’t work out (but here’s what we learnt)
Step 3: Proof Of Concept
- Build something — working with a developer to build, test, learn, iterate.
What we learnt
People said they:
- Created, adapted and learnt new techniques
- Enjoyed the freedom and collaboration
- Were energised throughout (a welcome distraction from Covid!)
- Learnt fast
We discovered:
- Remote working is not a blocker to collaboration and creative thinking — we felt even more collaborative and closer
- A brief should be short — a paragraph (not an essay)
- Small teams work really well
- Our Product Managers and Stakeholders got to understand XD by being hands on — what was learnt in terms of practice they apply elsewhere
- It’s amazing what you can achieve with little time and no budget!
What’s next?
- We’re designing, building and launching ideas and running tests across our brand websites
- We’re monitoring results
- We’ve run more rounds of innovation challenges, and included colleagues from different areas of the business so everyone gets involved
Give innovation space. Keep it simple. Enjoy the journey!
