How to plan a successful remote ideation session—Part I
Dylan Cook | UX Designer at Purplebricks
I love an ideation session. They’re an opportunity to get people from different roles and experiences, who wouldn’t normally work with each other, to solve a problem together. Before the pandemic hit, we’d get together in front of our trusty whiteboards with post-it notes and sketch till we had various solutions to test. Now we live in a world where the only time we see people of different roles and experiences is during our weekly trip to the supermarket.
It’s clear we have to do things remotely, which might be a bit of a new landscape for some. And while we’re all used to (insert your brand of chat software here) meetings, what about a 3-hour brainstorming session? Let’s dive into getting the best out of your remote ideation session, starting with the all-important 4 step planning.
1. Deciding who’s invited
Getting the size of your group right is all about balance. You’re going to have people who really want to be there, and that’s when decision becomes tough. Who makes the cut? In a pre-pandemic world, I might have facilitated groups of 5–10 people. Now, (and for my first remote ideation session) I ended up with more than twenty people!
This was partly due to circumstance, as I wanted to make sure I had each discipline represented. We had an outgoing dev team and a new one who would be taking over. Having both together meant they could bounce off each other and hand over at the same time.
The group included front-end and back-end developers. They know what is possible and what the limitations of your system are. The QAs know the system and flows inside and out. The Product Managers know what they want the future of their product to be and take the steer from a business perspective.
Last, and certainly not least — the design team. I’m lucky enough at Purplebricks to work with a host of UX, UI, Product and Content Designers. As the group was going to be split into squads, I wanted to make sure design was part of each one. This also meant they could act as additional facilitators, which would allow me to move around the squads during activities.
If you have a small design team or it’s just yourself, it can still work in a similar fashion. Just nominate some members of the group ahead of schedule so they know what the plan for the workshop is going to be in advance.
2. Organising your teams
So, how to you organise such a large group? This is where pre-organising your squads comes in handy. Don’t wait until the session to ask people to self-organise into groups. It takes time and that’s something that’s precious. Organise your squads with balance in mind. In most meetings, it’s always the loudest voices that seem to push the direction, so it’s important that every voice is heard. Some people are introverted and some extroverted. Make sure someone is there who can help the quieter members share their opinion, and keep your teams as balanced as possible.
In the end I had four squads, which meant facilitating the next step — the breakout rooms. These are separate meetings for a squad to discuss and perform the workshop activities away from the main group.
The breakout room functionality is a fairly new feature in Microsoft Teams. If your meeting software doesn’t allow for breakout rooms, you can compensate by doing the following:
1) Organise the main meeting. This is where everyone will start, so make sure everyone has an invite. After each meeting activity, this is where people will return and discuss what they were doing.
2) Create a separate meeting per squad and don’t forget to invite yourself. This means you can jump into the meetings, help when needed and also time keep.
When you send out the invites, its also a good opportunity to provide an agenda and let your group know what you’re planning to do in the session so they can prepare too. For these ideation sessions, it’s a good idea to let them know what equipment they might need, like a pen or pencil, paper and their phone camera, for example.
I should also mention that if your software can do it, to record the meetings. It means that when you come back to review and write up, you have something to refer to. Especially the breakout rooms which you won’t always be attending. The invite allows you to let the group know this in advance and if they are not comfortable being recorded, they can abstain from the session.
3. Setting the agenda
You know who’s going to be there. You know what subject matter you’re going to be focusing on. What you need to know now is the most important part — what you’re going to be doing during your ideation session.
Free for alls rarely work, and you want to be able to guide and keep control of the purpose of the meeting. So, planning out what you’re going to do, as well as the timings for each section, will help you form a successful agenda.
Think about this as your game plan, where you can plan and consider the best order for your activities to be completed. A good agenda will seamlessly connect one activity to another. You also want to keep people engaged, so remember that the timings for each activity should be flexible. Some activities may go faster, or some slower than you had originally planned.
If discussions gain momentum and are valuable, let them play out. If things dry up, have a back-up plan. Just have a rough estimation for each one, and keep an on eye on them during the session. If it looks like things are slowing down or everything has finished, feel free to move on to the next activity, knowing you may have banked some extra time for a future activity.
4. Creating your digital playground
With your agenda planned, you’re going to need prepare your ‘digital playground’. In a less disease-ridden world, we’d be crowded around our trusty whiteboards, moving post-it notes, conducting dot tests or sketching our ideas. Luckily, many tools have now arisen to service this need digitally.
At Purplebricks, we use a whiteboard software called MURAL to emulate a real-life whiteboard. You need an account to enjoy its benefits, but your boards can be shared freely with anyone, which makes it perfect for an ideation session. Use the time before the session to plan out the areas your teams are going to work in, adding in any relevant information that could influence and aid discussions. This can be in the form of digital post-its or links.
For our last ideation session, I added some of our latest user feedback from Hotjar and Userbrain test sessions. To save time, these were organised into groups ahead of the session, and I sent a link out so the team could review beforehand. Sending this in advance gives some team members a chance to immerse themselves in some of the content before the ideation begins. The likelihood is that not everyone will do this, but it provides a good jumping off point for those who want to do some more background research beforehand.
So, your invites are sent, your teams are formed, your agenda is planned and your assets are ready — what now?
