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Day 30: Congratulations School of Fish

We're so sad the program is over, but so very proud and honored to send these Fish back to their home offices, where we know they will make a tremendous impact to our business, teams and culture. They've accomplished so much is such a short period of time. Our goal for this program was to teach them about UX the Razorfish Way. We set out to give them exposure to every type of problem, activity and task that they may encounter as they begin their careers at Razorfish. They covered 30 UX topics in 30 days. They had an entire secondary curriculum sponsored by our HR team to help put them on a track for success. And they did it all while taking on a pretty sizable business challenge for one of our key retail client.

Congratulations Amanda, Shane, Mark, Kristy, Jonathan, Angela, Natashia, Mel, Jo-Ann, Anne, Quinn and Hillary!

Day 29: The Big Day

Today is the big day! And the group was AMAZING. Leaders from across the Nation joined us in Chicago to watch the School of Fish present their final pitch concepts. They did a phenomenal job delivering an omni channel strategy for one of our key retail clients. From the ideas themselves to the stories they told to bring them to life, they blew the audience away. They were poised and polished well beyond their years of experience. They handled tough questions with ease. And they were funny, charming and confident.

Day 28: Practice, Practice and MORE Practice!

We spent most of the day running through the presentation....again and again. The groups had some time to get into the room, work through the logistics and do a few dry runs. They're great at coaching each other and collaborating as a team to make sure that everything is perfect. And they still have plenty of final details to work through with the deck, prototype and illustrations. We're amazed at the pace and speed that they are working at get every last detail nailed down. They continue to impress with their confidence and commitment to brilliance. They may be nervous, but they are handling it like pros!

Day 27: Documenting Experiences

INSTRUCTIONAL SESSION

In the morning, we took the group through the basics of documenting experiences for build. They learned the ins and outs of developing functional specifications, interaction notes and build books.

PROJECT

Most of their day was really spent getting ready for their big pitch day. The teams are working frantically to hone their stories and finalize the concepts.

Day 26: All About Axure

We're starting the week by diving deep into prototyping. The group is in an all-day workshop, developing prototypes for their project concepts. Each group is pitching their concept through a combination of a storyboard sketches and click-able prototypes. They started with the overall storyboard and then began defining the key moments through wireframes. The step today is to figure out which parts of their wireframes are best articulated through a click-able prototype. It's a lot to pull together. They're figuring out how all the pieces and parts come together best to tell a compelling story.

Week 5 Recap

Week 5 marks has been the turning point for most of the teams. Like any good project, it's that moment when everyone moves from "What if" to "Get it done." The teams have been working diligently this week to finalize concepts, storyboards, wireframes and presentation details. They have 4 days left until the end of the program - and their big pitch. It's ON! (and they're lookin' great!)

Day 25: Work Day + Internal Reviews

Today is also a work day. The groups are working individually and in their concept groups on all the elements of their pitch. From the outside, it feels a bit frenetic. This week they've been consistently jumping back and forth between the actual concept articulation (through storyboards, wires and prototypes) and the pitch presentation deck. We held a regroup in the afternoon to review the master presentation outline, followed by an internal review / critique of all the wireframes for each of the three concepts. Both helped them clearly identify the gaps in both their concepts and the story. They're moving quickly, but making a lot of progress quickly too. Multitasking is a mandate for UX thinkers, but this group is juggling a lot of different parts and pieces. Brains hurt when good things are happening!

Day 24: User Testing

INSTRUCTIONAL SESSION

This morning's session covered the multiple methods we use to solicit design input from consumers at Razorfish. One of the program mentors (and UX leaders) took the group through Guerrilla, Usability, Beta and RITE testing methodologies. Most were familiar with usability testing, but the level of experience and exposure to the different approaches was limited for most.

Originally, the group was supposed to test their concepts with internal customers as part of their process. We opted to remove this from the schedule to allow the group more time to solidify their concepts and presentations. Unfortunately, we needed more time to get the ideas to a better place and had to prioritize. They will have plenty of time to experience testing in their project work, but we're bummed that we couldn't allow them the first hand learning opportunity during the program.

PROJECT

The afternoon was a work day. They continue to further refine concept statements, storyboards, wireframes and their pitch deck. During these sessions, the facilitators spend a lot of time checking in and doing drive-by critiques to help shape the work as it is evolves.

Day 23: Presentation Help!

WORKSHOP

Help is on the way! We welcomed a former Razorfish employee and actor back to Razorfish today to help the team work through their actual pitch presentations. (Actors? It's pretty amazing that we have this much talent, diversity and access to expertise in our network!) Coming into the session, it was critical for each team to have a solid concept definition, as well as a draft of their pitch presentation story. Our guest opened the morning by reviewing what makes a great story. Picking up on the Storytelling Workshop from a few weeks ago, this session was a practical, hands-on session to help them draft and craft their final presentation story.

After a morning of activities with the entire team, each concept group worked separately with our facilitator to figure the most salient points to be communicated, how to make the biggest impact, tough questions to prepare for, format and the best order for presenting. They came out of the day with a working outline, clear message and logistical plan for their pitch. We can't wait to see them in action! We know they'll be great.

Day 22: Improv?

INSTRUCTIONAL SESSION

Tuesday kicked off with a session on client collaboration. The group was joined by one of seasoned Directors, who took them through a series of strategies, approaches and tips / tricks for navigating the thin line between consulting and collaborating with your clients.

PROJECT

After the session, we had time for catching up. The groups continued working through their concepts, flows, and wires, but each team is at a different level of fidelity and we need to get everyone caught up. By the end of the day, we tasked each team with having a clearly defined storyboard for their concept, clearly identified opportunities for wireframes and prototypes, as well as a first draft presentation outline.

WORKSHOP

In the afternoon, we took everyone out of their comfort zone with an afternoon of Improv. Yes. Improv. We've had tremendous success teaching our teams to work together to deliver great presentations through Improv training. They learned and practiced a handful of acting techniques centered around working together as a team to produce a single result. After each activity, the group discussed the relevance and application to life at Razorfish. Their reaction: They loved it! Thought it was an adrenaline rush. No one felt uncomfortable. No one wanted it to end.

Day 21: Wireframes

INSTRUCTIONAL SESSION

It's the beginning of Week 5, and things just got real. We're exactly 2 weeks away from the final pitch presentations. Everyone and everything is kicking into high gear.

In the morning, we worked on formalizing ideas by translating sketches and drawings into wireframes. After a brief discussion about what wireframes are and how they are used, the team worked on creating a sample wireframe together — starting with identifying the goal of the screen, working through the foundational elements, and adding in the details.

PROJECT

They spent the rest of the day in their groups applying what they learned in the wireframing session to their concepts. We had them start by identifying the key parts of the experience they wanted to wireframe and working through the details of the screens. Some groups had a good grasp on what their experience should look like and dove into Omnigraffle to create their wireframes. Other groups spent a good portion of the day sketching and trying to identify which key moments best described the value proposition for the given concept. At the end of the day, we had them switch gears back to the presentation outline for each concept, filling in details where they had them and identifying the remaining gaps.

Week 4 Recap

OBSERVATIONS, LESSONS LEARNED, NEXT STEPS

We're past the half-way point and moving quickly into a very fast-paced home stretch. This week marks the official transition into "making" as the group finalizes their project concepts. They energy and momentum is quickening as well - or we may also have hit delirium. We're seeing definite trends and patterns in what's working and not in the program, giving us plenty of opportunity to evolve and improve in the next round.

Hands-On, High-Touch, Project-Based Learning. This group both expects and wants to learn through doing. They are eager to do anything that moves their project work along. They are quick to tire from anything that does not. For all of our sessions, workshops and activities, we've seen a clear pattern of engagement based on how active and involved they can be in the session. Face time and real-time feedback are critical for retaining engagement. Everything else they tune out.

Soft Skill Training Expectations are High. More than any others, this group wants, needs and expects the same level of high-touch, hands-on training when it comes to communication, team negotiation and group dynamics. Every 1:1 we have includes the ask for support, tools and skills for navigating the collaborative nature of an agency environment. Going forward, we need much more robust, hands-on training for this.

Clear Direction is Good. Too Many Cooks is Bad. The group definitely benefits from having a single, consistent voice to provide clear, definitive direction. As they've worked this week on concepting, they've craved specific direction to stop some of the internal swirl. Going forward, if the program continues to be PBL, we need a consistent, client representative to be fully engaged with the program to provide this voice.

Working Backwards, We're All a Bit Scared. This week we did that thing that every project team does - we sat down and worked backward from the deadline to revise our approach. We've been monitoring the pace of the program carefully throughout. This week, however, we sat down again to plan for the last two weeks. We cut some instructional sessions and made more time for the group to focus on their concepts.

Final Presentations - Thursday, June 24th. The groups will pitch their concepts to a pretty impressive set of "clients" and senior leaders in Creative and UX on Thursday, June 24th. They'll be building their story, storyboards and functional prototypes to bring their concepts to life in 3 teams.

Day 20: Project Concepting Complete

PROJECT

It's the end of week four and the primary goal this week was to get the group to solidify their project concepts. They've had plenty of activities, workshops and input from a variety of sources, but it was time to get down to something concrete and semi-final. Coming out of their client session, the group worked today to refine, consolidate and evolve there concepts for their client project. The client team gave them a tremendous amount of input - sending them off in many new directions - as clients often do. We put the team into concept groups and had each work on solidifying their idea.

We needed to reign things in a bit so we had them all focus on the simple things:

Who are you designing for and what pain point(s) are you trying to solve?

What is the value or opportunity for the business?

Tell us a story - of how a customer interacts with the brand through the experience concept you envision

By the end of the day, we were able to get each team narrowed in on a finite concept, with a full experience storyboard in place. From here, the teams decided what key elements or moments in the experience they will prototype to help bring the concepts to life.

Day 19: Sitemaps + Flows

INSTRUCTIONAL SESSION + ACTIVITY + PROJECT

We're incredibly fortunate at Razorfish to have so many "teachers" within our UX team. Our people love what they do and many have naturally gravitated toward teaching others what we do in their spare time. Half our our guest lecturers also happen to be adjunct faculty across local institutions. Today we were joined by two member of our UX team, who happen to teach in the HCI program at DePaul. They took the group through an instructional session on sitemaps, followed by practice activities that got the group used to documenting experience structures.

In the afternoon, we focused on flows. Using one of the project concepts, we led through group through a practice activity articulating the flow of one concept feature. We're moving quickly out of the abstract and into the concrete process of designing experiences.

Day 18: Tools, Tools and More Tools

INSTRUCTIONAL SESSIONS + ACTIVITIES

Getting down to the nitty gritty, we had a day of introduction and practice to a variety of tools used at Razorfish to create and document experience. From design basics like Omnigraffle and InDesign to prototyping must-haves like Balsamiq and Axure, the group had a day to roll up their sleeves and start "making" using a combination of the tools.

PROJECT

In the afternoon, the group finalized their project concepts in preparation for a "client check-in." They have grown so accustomed to generating experience concepts that they're beginning to lose track a bit of where and why they were headed in a single direction. They're preparing for a check in with their clients tomorrow, in order to get feedback and hopefully lock down direction.

Day 17: Storytelling

WORKSHOP

The training program is one of the most high-touch, high-involvement programs I've seen ever in my career. We are so very fortunate to be able to provide such an experience for this group. It could only be done because of the tremendous amount of thoughtful and dedicated Razorfish employees who have volunteered to help make this experience great for the Fish.

We were thrilled and honored to have a senior member of our Executive team spend the day with the Fish, teaching them how to create emotionally compelling, rewarding and winning presentations. The Fish had an experience today that most employees wait years to have. We are forever grateful that we were able to make this happen and can't wait to watch these rock stars put their new skills into action.

Day 16: Design Methods

INSTRUCTIONAL SESSIONS

We spent the morning with the group helping them understand all the various methodologies they may encounter while working at Razorfish. Senior leaders from across UX and other disciplines took them through all the ins and outs of agile, waterfall, watergile, stragile and more. We also took them through a proprietary method or two in an effort to help them understand how their program training may ebb and flow as they move across agency projects and clients. The group had very targeted and insightful questions for all of our guest lecturers, as they tackled understanding why one method should be used over another. The discussion sparked a healthy debate about the future team structures and skills needed to support emerging methodologies. So smart, these fish. So lucky, to have so many awesome senior leaders dedicating their time and expertise to helping set the Fish up for success.

In the afternoon, our Razorfish Mobility team spent some time talking design for mobility. Although the Fish use devices daily (about 150 times to be exact), they had not had an opportunity to truly focus on how the context of mobile impacts the way experiences are designed. Through a deep dive on mobile (stats, gestures, trending experiences), the group gained a better perspective on mobile first and what it means at Razorfish.

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