My Design Workbook

A collection of pages from my design workbook, this blog follows my process as I navigate through each design space. This blog covers concepts, (bad) sketches and methods I use as I work on these complex problems.

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METHOD: Group Critique

An oldie but a goodie. This is one of the most basic forms of getting feedback. What you need is a bunch of sketches, a pitch and a group of fantastic, smart designers. 

Step 1: Show the group what you have. 

Step 2: Let them rip it to shreds. 

Step 3: Feel bad. 

Step 4: Recover and realise that was amazingly helpful. 

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METHOD: Speed Dating

Design, in my opinion, cannot be a single person sport. Even when working on a project alone, it’s important for designers to let others into the process. But how do you do this in an effective way?

Well, one such method is called Speed Dating. 

How does it work?

Step 1 (Preparation): Take a sheet of paper and quickly draw one concept. In this case, I used storyboards and 5 keywords that describe your idea. 

Step 2 (Share): Take 1 minute to share that concept with a colleague or friend. 

Step 3 (Iterate): Once you're done, they have 2 minutes to modify, change or add to your idea in some way.

Step 4 (Swap): Then you swap positions and repeat the activity. 

You can technically keep doing this as many times as you want and quickly come up with a tonne of ideas! I did the activity 3 times and each one was very helpful. It helped me to think in directions that I wouldn't have by myself. 

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METHOD: Ideation through Exemplar collection (PART3 - GALLERY & PICTURES)

A collection of the pages from one ideation session

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METHOD: Ideation through Exemplar Collection (Part 2)

So you have your 100 exemplars. Man that took long! So whats next? 

Abstraction and Ideation

Each exemplar is chosen for a particular reason. These reasons can be abstracted to larger ideas that you want to (or not want to) see in your final design/product. I call these abstractions. 

These abstract ideas can then be used to a) generate concepts, ideas and directions OR b) find new exemplars. 

This form of organic free form ideation can go on forever, limited only by the time constraints of your project. 

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METHOD: Ideation through Exemplar collection (Part 1)

So as a designer, how do you come up with new ideas? It’s a question I get asked all the time. So one way to do this is using Exemplar collections. 

What is an exemplar? 

An exemplar is anything that serves as a typical or excellent model of a quality that you want your design to have. For this step, I collected 100 exemplars of real world activities, objects and methods that I believe in some way relate to what I’m working on. 

Some qualities that I wanted my project to focus on:

Purpose

Increasing Efficiency

Open design process

Engaging teams with user Research

Helping agile teams think more empathically

Helping agile teams have more long term vision (perspective)

Collaboration

In person Collaboration

Online Collaboration

Documentation/Specification Sheets

Collaboration with non-designers

Exemplar collection

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Feedback and Critique

What's the point of generative proposals if they don't start a conversation!

Special thanks to the Sarah and Sanket for their wonderful feedback!

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Concept 3

PROBLEM: Designers and product development teams often focus on the ideal use case, ignoring user error and mistakes that might lead to a bad experience. 

This vintage looking camera lets you create a movie of the worst experience someone could have with your product. 

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Concept 2

PROBLEM: User Testing and User Feedback is still not a ‘regular’ part of a product development process. 

This giant clock, placed in the work area, automatically sends the latest release or prototype to user tested at the end of a predefined period of time. 

Special thanks to my friends Igor and Phoebe for agreeing to be in the picture!

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Concept 1

PROBLEM: Designers on software teams are often afraid to show “rough sketches” or “ugly designs” to their team. 

The prettify slider helps is a physical button where you slide to make things more or less pretty. 

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Time for some generative concepts

Concepting is important. As a designer, there comes a point where analytical work needs to stop. Concepting here isn't meant to come up with a solution, but to lead to interesting conversations. 

These ‘proposals’ will most likely never make it to the final design. But the act of putting them out there generates insights and conversation!

For the next few concepts, I will use sketches combined with text and cutouts to propose a possible design.

Note how these concepts are kept deliberately abstract. Abstract concepts lets people add their own interpretations and lets the designer get a variety of responses. 

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METHOD: “How might we” statements & Affinity Diagramming

This one is straight from the sprint book (http://www.thesprintbook.com/). 

When you're in the deep end trying to figure out a design space, it can be incredibly difficult to “propose something” - to make the leap from problem to opportunity. 'How might we' statements (done as a team or alone) can help you reframe every issue as an opportunity.

This activity was done in the form on a whiteboard and post-it notes. Once finished, I group similar statements together, drawing connections between them all. 

In this situation, I was able to arrive at a few insights and some questions that require exploration. 

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METHOD: 20 Questions

Not unlike the game ‘20 Questions’,  this method can help think more critically of a design space. To ask “why, how and who” about the space. 

The idea here is not to answer the questions but to ask questions that provoke different trains of thought. 

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Just some predispositions

Reading is always a good space to start working on any design. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do research! Primary research will come later. For now, I explore existing work in the space, identify perceived issues and my own predispositions. 

Here, I try to use iconography and quotes to think more visually. This technique is inspired mostly for sketchnothing. 

Mentioned on this page: Jeff Gothelf, Dave Malouf and the Book Lean UX. 

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METHOD: The Design Space Schema

Trying to make sense of a design space is difficult! Complex spaces require a lot of analytical thinking. A first attempt at trying to make sense of the mess. This project I am trying to design something that would be useful for designers working on software development teams. 

How to do it?

It's pretty simple. On the top write down a set of parameters that you think will be critical in whatever you come up with. Below that list everything you can think of within that parameter. For example: For designer’s interaction and collaboration is of utmost importance. So I made “interaction” the parameter, and everything below that is the different ways in which designers interact with their team. 

Note: As with everything in design, this schema is a method to help you make sense of the space. Important to not get too bogged down in the details!

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It starts. People tell me I have a child’s handwriting.