Issue 02: 12 Months in…

Recently, I completed my first year at Grid Smarter Cities. Similar to when I had completed my first 6 months, I want to reflect on my practice and share what I have learnt! 2019 has been an exciting year so far. From presenting “a design thinker walks into a tech company” at the inaugural BuildIT Right conference, to completing the Transport for London: Roadlab programme, to presenting to a delegation from Hong Kong’s Design centre to attending the ADDC conference in Barcelona, the year has been packed with plenty of stand-out moments already!

As well as speaking at a conference, I have had the privilege of being invited to speak at events such as Creative Fuse CAKE event, Space, Place and Location data, and Generator’s UX Day 3.0 where I got to discuss all things design alongside some of the region’s top practitioners! But, before I get into what I’ve been doing outside of Grid, (article to follow!), I want to share what I have been doing inside the organisation and what I have learnt!

Putting the visual into the strategy with “posters”

The team had commented on a lack of visibility of the plan for the year. By collaborating with the Product Director (who I will refer to as Chief Product Bod from here) and business leadership, I designed three A0 whiteboard posters that would give the team enough visibility into the year ahead. The hardest part of this task was determining what was “enough” information, and also to ensure a quality that meant the posters were not seen as finite but as living documents. I worked alongside the Chief Product Bod to design three posters:

to visualise the maturity of our products in relation to our product development matrix,

to visualise the priority of existing and potential products, projects and partnerships

to visualise the next four quarters of project & product activity.

The posters were A0 and finished with a dry-wipe laminate. The posters created served their purpose; The tools were successful in alleviating anxiety around the direction and immediate activity of Grid. However, one thing became clear. There needs to be regular effort to update the tools; it is critical senior business leadership communicate any changes in the situation frequently and directly. I have identified a member of the senior management team I believe is most suitable for ownership of the tools, and I will be discussing how we can continue to use them shortly.

Facilitating the design and development of the minimum viable product (MVP)

Earlier this year, Grid was a member of the first Transport for London Roadlab, A 10-week innovation where we had to demonstrate an MVP of our platform, Kerb, in a new context! Throughout the project, it was my role to inform the MVP based on user research sessions, engaging with the project stakeholders and the available capacity within the Grid team.

I attended several events where representatives from the stakeholder groups affected shared their experiences interacting with the context we were given. Through a semi-structured discussion, we developed an understanding of each stakeholders priority, their responsibility and their current experience. I then worked collaboratively with our Chief Product Bod, Front-end Developer and Designer. By visualising the desired experience on the whiteboard and facilitating discussion between the team, we generated ‘rough and ready’ user stories for the Chief Product Bod to refine to then handover to our Front-end Developer.

Thanks to a late-night from our Front-end Developer (thanks Jonny!), we created a web-based application to supplement our existing mobile apps. This was a great exercise in how to manage scope. Grid had previously explored the use case and value proposition for the MVP, so our main task was ensuring it was suitable for the trial and to make sure we didn’t get carried away trying to build too much, too soon. The development team was working in parallel at the time, so I was mindful of the capacity we had available to create the MVP. The questions I kept in mind were; “is this suitable for the trial? Can we reduce complexity? Is that critical to the success of the trial?”. This focus on reducing scope and complexity led us to develop an MVP that was fit for its context, not for production; a successful MVP if you ask me!

Designing a 10-week software trial

Part of the success criteria for the Roadlab programme was a successful demonstration of an MVP. It was my responsibility to figure out how we were going to do that!

Once the programme started, I began mapping out the full 10 weeks. On the whiteboard, I sketched the way I’d like the trial to go (whilst being mindful, this was not how the project was going to go at all ha!). I constantly reviewed what I had on the whiteboard, challenging it and adapting it to the emerging project conditions. My initial inquiry was led by questions;

“What were the key activities we need to fulfil to be successful? What are the measures of success and our KPIs? Who do we need to recruit, and by when? What are we trying to prove? How can we validate that? What experience does our product MVP have to deliver for us to be successful in the trial?”

I then translated the details in an Experiment plan, where I detailed; the hypothesis, the data we would need to collect, how we were going to use the data collected, control variables, independent variable and the logistics of the trial. This was shared for review with the team and then I briefed the project manager who then took over to manage the trial

My main takeaway from this experience is that the success of a software trial is reliant on so many dependencies. From effective participant recruitment to establishing a strong hypothesis and identifying the required methodology and data to test it effectively. One thing that served me well was a framework I learnt from a colleague in a previous role; “Easy, Brave, Ambitious”. As I developed the plan for the trial, I kept asking myself; what is the easiest (simplest, quickest) way of doing this and then increasing the complexity for “Brave” and “Ambitious”. As more of the project conditions became clear and rigid, I was able to select parts from the “easy, brave, ambitious” variations to build the most suitable and achievable version of the trial. The trial was successful, it delivered the data and evidence we required to support our pitch and submission.

Principles of Design @ Grid

The design team at Grid is currently an army of two; with plans to expand in the near future I wanted to create a set of principles I could share with potential applicants so they could understand the approach the Design team at Grid apply to “Design”. Also, these principles also help colleagues better understand what Design at Grid, what guides us, how we describe “Design at Grid”. Working collaboratively with our Visual Designer and our UX/Front-end Developer, we crafted 5 core principles and their descriptions, (which can be read here: https://bit.ly/2YOAfcv)

From conversations with colleagues, and peers outside the business the principles act as a great introduction to Design at Grid and stimulate conversation about our vision for Design at Grid.

Designing the future of “Design at Grid”

As previously mentioned, it is likely the Design team at Grid will be growing in the near future. With this in mind, I have been designing what I’d like the design team at Grid to be able to do. To lend the phrase from my Visual Designer, we want Design to act as the central nervous system for the organisation. We want the Design function to be a multidisciplinary team that facilitates collaboration and accomplishment across the different business functions and hierarchies. Ambitious, I know. We are currently exploring how different compositions of disciplines and skillsets could align, what that would mean for our organisational structures and designing new, bespoke organisational structures

What I am up to at the minute…

Currently, I am refining our framework of inquiry for our next phase of research activity. I want this framework of inquiry to become our starting point for our research activity; improving it by constantly critiquing as we reflect on our practice. I am also working alongside our Product Owner and Visual Designer on modelling the problem-opportunity within our new project context. It is an exciting time, it feels like the last year has been spent building a solid foundation we are now rapidly building on top of!!

Notes from the author:

Unstudied is no longer just a blog, it is a social for design think-ers and do-ers based in and around Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Check out the photos below and the video from our summer social at The Forth Pink Lane: https://bit.ly/2Td2qg0