User Research, Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Collaboration
User Experience is a team sport. This is easier said than done. The skills needed to collaborate across disciplines and departments, communicating ideas effectively and working as a team, are often overlooked. Instead we can easily focus only upon technical competency and practice.
Successful collaboration in UX is essential to be able to deliver successful projects, build and maintain teams and defuse stressful relationships with stakeholders and clients.
The customer is a stranger and humans are not used to paying so much attention to the needs of strangers. The organisation is a tribe, and each department or division is its own sub-tribe. It’s so much easier and more comfortable to be organization-centric. — Gerry McGovern
This reminds me of Dave Gray’s excellent Culture and Change talk at DareConf 2013. Dolphin Department vs. Shark Corp; understanding the organisation’s culture and its potential for resisting change…
Insights for effective project leadership and collaboration. Three months of youth development treks with Raleigh International.
Post-it notes are the confetti of truth! — Anon.
A tongue-in-cheek Post-it note quote overheard at the London Agile Content Meetup with Sarah Richards (user stories to share responsibility for content). Love it, and the new Post-it note website; so much inspiration.
Violence in our contact with others means that we forgo more compassionate perspectives and effective strategies for meeting needs. Recognise that everyone is trying to be effective within their own context, culture and constraints. Seek to bridge gulfs in communication and mindset. If you feel frustrated, you’re doing it wrong. Rinse and repeat.
The people farthest from understanding the technology are often the ones making the strategic decisions Dennis Kardys Great opening quote in Paul Boag’s book Digital Adaptation. The inference is that the people most removed from digital publishing are senior management and their influencers. This is often true, certainly in the higher-education sector. However I might … Read more
Mentoring a team in a Design Jam is an excellent way to sharpen your facilitation and leadership skills. This is what I learned, and techniques I tried, at CityStarters and VISA Europe’s Jam to explore the future of payments #beyondplastic.
Simple icebreaking games can seem corny, especially to our British sense of reserve. However, when done well, they can help a diverse group of strangers rapidly coalesce into a team of co-creators with a dynamic to get them through the rest of the Jam. Dave Gray’s Gamestorming Wiki is a great place to start looking for ideas.
It’s also important for the mentor to stress that each team member is different. Everyone will have a different point of reference, aptitudes and experience. The team members may also wish to practice roles and skills that are under utilised in their normal life or role. Consider steering the group in this direction as a successor activity to the icebreaking.
Summary: icebreaking requires strong facilitation and prior preparation by the mentor, but it will setup the team dynamic for the rest of the activities.
This is essential for the group to understand and meet its milestones and to progress successfully throughout the Jam. Look for and think about:
Summary: each sprint is intense, and there can be multiple and concurrent conversations and work streams. It’s easy for the team (and for the mentor) to forget about this essential criteria for successful delivery.
The “Yes, and…” rule is one of the core protocols of improvised theatre. It’s designed to unlock creative ideas by deliberately preventing other team members from negating the contribution of someone in the team. Rather they must accept, build-upon and extend the idea by saying “Yes, and…” prior to their contribution. Some examples:
Summary: the mentor should observe the dynamic of the group and consider introducing “Yes, and…” if there are conflicts, exclusions or a limited level of communication, listening and creativity.
It’s probable that the team will need to divide or work on parallel tasks during the sprints in the Jam. Ensure that you think about the diverse mix of skills and personalities that make up the team when this happens. This might be an opportunity to steer the team (or team members) into sub-teams that complement each other in terms of skill, or in terms of their personal benefit from the Jam.
Examples:
It’s also important to watch for any splitting into factions that mars working toward their common objective. For example: continuing to work of parallel solutions after the idea storming phase is complete.
Summary: use the beginning of each sprint consider the team dynamic, the objectives of the team members and the task in hand. Provide guidance to the group as needed.
Johanna Kollmann used to run DesignJams.org, and DesignJam London, but sadly this site was taken down in 2014. The only options I’m aware of are:
Let me know in the comments if this changes, or if there are more.
Here is a post-jam video summarising the experience (featuring Team Six!):
A wonderful slide gleaned from Thum YeeMun’s talk at agile content conf. YeeMun was sharing her experiences using lean practices during her transition from digital agency life to her lifestyle start-up, Scarlett of Soho. The slide appears at 20m40s.
Making life easier for employees requires much more ongoing hard work from management and IT. It takes management time to save employees time and managers are simply not prepared to make that sacrifice. Gerry McGovern …painfully true and why the User Experience function needs to be included in Enterprise IT software selection, intranet information architecture … Read more