Slides from User Vision's 23/02/12 Breakfast Briefing on Collaborative Design

1. Collaborative design
Breakfast Meetings 2012

2. What is it?
• It is a methodology that includes involving
stakeholders, designers and users on an
equal footing in the design process in order
to help ensure the product designed meets
their needs and is usable.
• An idea for a new service or solution is
presented and the stakeholders are asked
to participate during several stages of an
innovation process: the initial exploration
and problem definition both to help define
the problem and to focus ideas for
solution, and during development, they
help evaluate proposed solutions.

3. What is it?
• It follows iterative
design, evolving each design after
being tested with users and asked
for feedback.
• This is the Scandinavian tradition
of design of IT artefacts and it has
been evolving since 1970.
• Collaborative design is about
working together to achieve a
shared goal.

4. Differences with the co-operative process
• The iterative process involves two
or more people (or organisations)
working in unison.
• The collaborative design process
goes beyond the meeting of
common goals by creating a
collective determination to
achieve an identical objective.

5. When in the project lifecycle?
• At the idealisation phase:
 Before the budget is
approved, having a clear goal and a
shared understanding of it could
help a better estimation of costs
and timescales.
 It provides as well with a visual
product for getting budget approval.
• Why?
 It brings innovation to the
company, it does not need to be
bound by limitations, resources
shortages or specific technology.
 Only the best customer experience
and services are in mind.

6. When in the project lifecycle?
• At the design phase:
 It allows a better understanding
and explanation of the
business, technical and user
requirements.
• Why?
 Including all stakeholders
before the actual development
has started.
 Have a visual representation of
the final product much earlier
on the process.
 Possibility of parallel
development, agile approach
and even extra planning for
issues.
 Plus a good start for a test plan
creation.

7. Benefits
• Working together for the same goal.
• Clear understanding of the objective and main deliverables.
• Clear understanding of the user, business and technical
requirements for all stakeholders.
• Better and more accurate estimations of costs & timescales.
• Improved communications across different channels and
stakeholders.
• Consistent user experience and brand design with other
projects and services.
• Possibility of re-using resources for future projects.

8. Which resources?
• One representative per stakeholder team at
least:
 UX expert
 IT
 Marketing & Brand
 Finance
 Project Management
 Legal
 Etc.
• Willingness to accept the challenge and being
open-minded for receiving feedback and new
ideas.
• A couple of days at the start of the project for
a workshop and a couple of hours a week for
maintaining contact with the iterations.

9. Which resources?
• For designing new products or services or re-
designing current ones, we just need some
very basic materials at the workshop:
 Paper templates and post-its.
 Pens, colours, etc.
 A computer with a projector for sharing early
designs.
 Brand guidelines.
• And then, when providing the deliverables:
 Axure or prototyping software for wireframes
and prototypes.
 PDF, Office or document sharing software.

10. Deliverables
• Business, technical and user
requirements definition documents.
• Customer journeys.
• Low and High-fidelity design for the
final product/service.
• Timescales & Cost estimations.
• Milestones definition.

11. What type of projects?
• New products or services:
 New channels (retail, web, etc)
 Ideas exploration.
• Improving user experience for current products/services.
• Re-design of screens for current products or services.

12. EXAMPLES OF
COLLABORATIVE DESIGN

13. Paper prototyping
• “The sketchboard is a low-fi
technique that makes it
possible for designers to
explore and evaluate a range
of interaction concepts while
involving both business and
technology partners. Unlike
the process that results from
wireframe-based design, the
sketchboard quickly performs
iterations on many possible
solutions and then singles out
the best user experience to
document and build upon.” -
Brandon Schauer, Adaptive
Path

14. Paper prototyping - advantages
• The ability to convey a solution visually.
• The ability to presuppose new solutions.
• The ability to fuse together a solution from competing constraints.

15. Paper prototyping video

16. Customer journey mapping
• It is a form of consultation to
improve a service through
finding out how people use
the service and how they
interact with the service
provider.
• It provides a map of the
interactions and emotions
that take place, and can help
an organisation provide its
customers with the
experience it wants them to
have.

17. Customer journeys - advantages
• Definition of how prospective and current
customers use a service and when they interact
with staff and the system.
• Clear understanding of how customers perceive
the organisation at each interaction and how
they would really like the customer experience
to be.
• Perspective on how departments and functions
need to work together.
• Identification of any potential barriers and
obstacles that customers encounter.
• Possibility of designing an optimal experience
that meets the expectations of major customer
groups and achieves competitive advantages.

18. Customer journey mapping

19. Idea/concept development
• Concept development is a design process
driven by a set of business
requirements, user needs and technical
specifications, which are then converted
into a set of conceptual designs.
• These designs represent an approximate
description of form, working
principles, and product or service features.
• Uses collaborative techniques like
brainstorming, collateral
thinking, sketching, customer journey
mapping, etc.

20. Idea/concept development - advantages
• No boundaries & limitations
thinking.
• Innovation via your own resources
and the people who know your
services best.
• Inclusion of potential and current
user opinion on the new projects
planning.

21. Concept/idea development

22. Summary of benefits
• Provides a method to focus on the big problems before getting mired in
the niggly details.
• Allows the swift exploration of multiple ideas to develop the right
solution.
• Involves others.
• Does it all visually!

23. Questions?
Luke Burrows & Paula Mestre
User Vision
55 North Castle Street
Edinburgh
EH2 3QA
p: 0131 225 0850
e: luke@uservision.co.uk
e: paula@uservision.co.uk