Wall to wall research
There’s something about seeing a physical space fill up with post-its, pictures and string, linking insights, that gives people a tangible sense of progress being made.
Of course, the pandemic has sent us all online, but that doesn’t mean we can’t share our work in ways that enable everyone to engage and go on the journey together.
Using online collaboration tools isn’t quite the same, but there are ways they can really transform the way a project team works together — and dare I say it- even beat the real world project boards of old when it comes to keeping multiple stakeholders engaged and assembling tons of information in one place.
Over the last ten months, I was part of a team that took a new service through Discovery, Alpha and Beta. We used a digital research wall as a tool for show and tells, workshops and to keep our research organised.
I wrote this blog in the spirit of sharing is caring. We learned a lot and want other teams to benefit. There are practical tips, redacted layouts and some pros and cons that we think will help develop best practice. And I’d love to hear about your experience and ideas too.
Laying the foundations
During discovery we used a discovery wall* to help us organise our initial findings. This had headings vertically down the left side and the stages of the journey across the top horizontally.
This helped us map all the previous research that had been done so far. Two pre-discoveries had been done for the internal and external facing part of the journey so there were a lot of complex policies, systems and users to get our heads around.
As we did our own primary research we mapped this onto our own research wall**. Creating a place where all the artefacts and insights could be shared with the team.
This was a great showcase of the work that we had done as we went into Alpha.
Filling in the bricks
During Alpha we started to use the research wall as a ‘live’ place to keep the team updated.
So, not just showing the shiny organised wall at the end of the project but using it as a one-stop-shop to stay up to date with what was coming out of our research, such as sharing back insights from workshops and testing.
It helped us stay organised and have everything we needed — discussion guides, consent forms, workshop boards — in one place.
As we began to develop personas and user needs, these were also kept here, ready for the team to refer back to in sessions. It made it easy to find things when it came to putting our Alpha GDS assessment together. It also helped us keep the client informed about what we were doing during the Alpha phase.
We trialled getting the team to drop any questions they had onto the board. This was useful, as we were working in a large product family, and it wasn’t possible to be in every meeting.
However this section of the board did get a bit confusing. It wasn’t immediately clear which questions had been dealt with and which ones hadn’t.
This is something we wanted to improve going into Beta.
Building the wall together
During Beta, we started to use the research wall even more as a live space for all of the user centred design disciplines. It acted as one source of truth for all workshops and insight sharing sessions. We did everything on here from UCD sprint planning to encouraging people to sign up as observers of research.
We had sections where you could see what decisions had been made and when. It was useful having this space to refer back to in meetings.
We found not everything fitted onto one board. So we began to trial other ways to link information to it. For instance, the many questions from the team were put into a questions log which we created in a spreadsheet. This was then linked to on the board. We found this easier to manage that the post its we were using in Alpha.
Developing the template
During the project, the board grew organically.
Now I’ve finished working on the project I’ve had the headspace to reflect on how I might set it up differently. I wanted to think about how I could have briefed people more effectively on how to navigate it. And how we could use it to help with everything from the day to day running of the project to our final GDS assessment.
I wanted to frame the tool as something that could help people going into government projects that might not have been part of them before.
After chatting to colleagues at Snook and seeing how other people have used similar boards in projects, we talked through the benefits and the possible limitations people had found to working in this way.
I created an Alpha template which you can see the first draft here
Benefits
- It can help keep the team aligned during the project. It encourages participation and promotes the idea that research is a team sport.
- It can help with that tricky client that feels like they’ve been left out of decisions and not brought along on the journey.
- It can be a great way to make sure you track the decisions being made and why. It’s particularly useful when you need to hand over your work to the next researcher.
- Something like this can make it really easy to find everything you need when you prepare for your GDS assessment.
- Some projects have used them for show and tells, to present research plans, as a synthesis space, and for retros. It’s a place to hold all your project ideas.
Limitations
- In one project, someone mentioned that the client kept changing the board. It’s important to think through how to work collaboratively but also how to be able to lock the board after certain sessions.
- Technical issues and abilities can be a barrier. For instance, people who were using Internet Explorer couldn’t use Mural.
- It’s difficult to find things when onboarding,
- It can take a while to load.
I have begun to develop a template for a board for use in the Alpha phase. I’m trialling this with colleagues at Snook to see how it might work in their projects. If this goes well, I’ll develop boards for the Discovery and Beta stages of projects too.
Top Tips
I’ll be chatting this through with the team over the next couple of weeks. So if you liked this post I’ll be sharing more top tips at the end of May
Help develop this further
We’d love your feedback and input to help us improve.
- What would you want to see on a board like this to make your projects run smoother?
- What do you think would work well?
- What do you think is missing?
- What might not work as well?
It would be great to hear from you. Drop me a line: anna.horton@wearesnook.com
*Credit to the Product Manager on our team, Barri Costello for sharing this plan
**Credit to Georgie Botton who came up with the design of the board
