Advancing UX in Your Organization (Fluxible Conference, September 2013)

Advancing UX in Your Organization
Kimberley Peter
User Experience Design Lead
IBM Rational Software
Toronto, Ontario
@kpeter
Adam Archer
Technical Lead, JazzHub
IBM Rational Software
Toronto, Ontario
@agarcher
©2013!

Fluxible . September 14-15, 2013! 2!
Introductions

•  Our backgrounds
•  Our work focus and
context
–  In-house (large corp)
About ‘us’

•  Your name
•  Your work focus and
context
–  In-house (small/large co)
–  Agency
–  Consultant
–  Other
•  Your interests today
About ‘you’

Overview

Kombi
Microbus
Transporter
In name …

the freedom to
explore …
to try new
things …
to embrace
change
In spirit …

Our plan for today …
Motivation
Context
Solutions
Consider cause or
motivation for change
in your context

Motivation
Context
Solutions
Visualize context for
prospective areas to
aﬀect change
Consider cause or
in your context

Motivation
Context
Solutions
Identify potential
solutions for change
to try out in your
context
Consider cause or
in your context
aﬀect change

Our plan in detail
Time
Topic
Duration
2:15 – 2:35
Introductions and overview
20 min
2:35 – 2:55
Topic 1 : Motivation
20 min
2:55 – 3:25
Activity 1 : Hands-on + discussion
30 min
3:25 – 3:30
Topic 2 : Context
5 min
3:30 – 3:45
Break
15 min
3:45 – 4:15
30 min
4:15 – 4:35
Topic 3 : Solutions
20 min
4:35 – 4:50
15 min
4:50 – 5:15
Conclusion, discussion and wrap!
25 min

A few disclaimers
•  Not a prescription
•  Not representing process
or methods in general at
IBM (but you could learn
more at:
http://www.ibm.com/
design/)
•  Not a replay of existing
sources

Topics + Activities

Topic #1
Motivation
Context
Solutions
Consider cause or
in your context

Pattern of practice (for change)
PRACTICE
SHARE
EXPERIMENT

Do it. Don’t sell it.  
– Jeﬀ Patton
Begin anywhere. 
– John Cage
PRACTICE
SHARE
EXPERIMENT

– Jeﬀ Patton
Begin anywhere. 
– John Cage
Share the value.
Promote practices.
Think ‘us’.  
– John Wiegand
PRACTICE
SHARE
EXPERIMENT

– Jeﬀ Patton
Begin anywhere. 
– John Cage
Share the value.
Promote practices.
Think ‘us’. 
– John Wiegand
Adapt to context.
Hone your skills.
Fake it ‘til you 
become it. 
– Ann Cuddy
PRACTICE
SHARE
EXPERIMENT

– Jeﬀ Patton
Begin anywhere. 
– John Cage
Share the value.
Promote practices.
Think ‘us’. 
– John Wiegand
Adapt to context.
Hone your skills.
Fake it ‘til you 
become it. 
– Ann Cuddy
PRACTICE
SHARE
EXPERIMENT
RECOGNIZE!

Motivation & ‘inventing on principle’
Source: Bret Victor, Inventing on Principle: Living for a Cause, CUSEC 2012 (http://vimeo.com/36579366)
“Creators need an immediate connection … This principle is so important to
me that when I see a violation of it, I consider it a moral wrong. And I don’t
think ‘opportunity’, but rather ‘responsibility’.”

Larry Tesler – “No Modes”
Image source: http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/LarryTesler
“… what drove him was the belief that ‘no person should be
trapped in a mode’ … and made it his life’s work to ﬁght against.”

Motivation in context
•  Bret’s Principle: “Creators need an
immediate connection”
•  Larry’s Principle: “No person should be
trapped in a mode”
•  Your Principle “…”

Motivations – A designer’s perspective
1.  Engineering-driven solutions – Designer as editor
2.  Wasted time on unused design – Why is your
release theme more important than mine?
3.  Problem-solving oriented – Is this the right thing to
solve / do we understand the problem well?
4.  Diﬀerent workﬂows and cadence – Silos suck
5.  Distributed teams – It’s lonely on the phone all the
time

Motivations – A developer’s perspective
1.  Late breaking, unexpected changes – I was
already fully committed before you came along
2.  Development teams (and product management
teams) are too ‘feature’ oriented – Just give ‘em
the functionality they asked for
3.  Impractical designs – Gee, I wished you’d talked to
me sooner
4.  Distributed teams – What ‘page’ are we on anyway?

Hmmm, these seem familiar
Design-to-Development Issue Correlation
Eng-driven solutions
Wasted time on unused
designs
Too problem-solving
oriented
Diﬀerent cadences
Distributed teams
Distributed teams
Impractical designs
Too feature oriented
Late-breaking changes

Motivation & ‘designing on principle’
•  Making software should be satisfying for
everyone involved and result in quality
outcomes

Motivation
Context
Solutions
Consider cause or
in your context
Activity #1

Activity #1 – Description – Part 1
•  The Breakup Letter
–  Consider your organization or team to be a ‘person’
you’ve been dating
–  Write that person a breakup letter. What would you
say if you were going to end this relationship?
Consider:
•  Your role in the relationship
•  Your reasons for the breakup, when issues occur and who is
involved
•  Time: 8 minutes
•  Materials: Pen and paper

•  Share your letter
–  Volunteers?

•  Highlight each issue within your letter
–  This will help you pull them out later in Activity #2
•  Materials: Pen and paper

Topic #2
Motivation
Context
Solutions
aﬀect change
Consider cause or
in your context

Process in context – Model

Process in context – Players+Activities

Process in context – Issues

Motivation
Context
Solutions
Consider cause or
in your context
aﬀect change
Activity #2

•  Find a partner
–  Someone with a similar work context
–  Someone you don’t currently work with
•  Welcome to My World
–  Take the issues you identiﬁed in the breakup letter and sketch
out the interactions around these issues (e.g., what, when, who)
– include full context and non-friction points
–  Use the post-its and shapes (circles, boxes, arrows) to make a
ﬂow diagram with annotations
–  Add new information if you think of it (beyond what you
captured in your letters)
•  Materials: Post-its, sharpies, large paper

•  Share and elaborate on your world
–  Share your sketch with your partner – describe its
components and what it means, then …
–  Clarify and discuss areas of ease, challenge and
interactions with other people. Elaborate the
drawings as you like
–  10 minutes: 5 minutes each to share
–  10 minutes: 5 minutes each to clarify and discuss
–  You can share in succession, or share then clarify
each person in turn – we will signal at 8 minutes

Topic #3
Motivation
Context
Solutions
Identify potential
to try out in your
context
Consider cause or
in your context
aﬀect change

Reframing from the design perspective

Recognizing areas for change

Shifting emphasis
•  Shift of emphasis from ‘what’ to ‘how’  
(in order to get to a better ‘what’)
–  From planning content to planning activities and
team organization
–  From problem solving to ﬁnding and understanding
–  From independent design to co-making

Planning activities/organization
•  Partnering with technical leads (past)
•  Leading cross-functional feature teams
•  Working with PM + tech leads to establish:
–  Principles and vision
–  Release themes
–  Candidate scenarios
•  Story mapping an holistic user-centric picture
•  Shared team rhythm
•  Shared tools for knowledge management, design
and ﬁle sharing
•  Design playbacks

Feature teams
•  A feature team is a long-lived, cross-functional,
cross-component team that completes many
end-to-end customer features—one by one.  
– Craig Larman and Bas Vodde, Feature Team Primer

Feature teams – our use
•  Our goal: Achieve common navigation across a
number of integrating products
•  Our team was design-led and cross-functional (~20
members):
–  Engineers (10)
–  User experience designers (4)
–  Product management (2)
–  User assistance (2)
–  Test (2)
•  Our team ran ~2 years (2010 to 2012) and
delivered many changes into two release cycles

Story mapping
•  Story mapping is an Agile UX method for
creating a visual backlog that provides an
overall picture of the primary activities, tasks
and sub-tasks of the targeted users
•  Typically done in person w/ a shared surface
•  Can be done remotely using graphical tools
(e.g., Microsoft Visio, Google Draw) or a
spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel, Google
Spreadsheet)

Story map components
•  Big activities
•  Small activities
•  Tasks
•  Sub-tasks
•  Additional markup
–  Questions
–  Ideas
–  Comments

Remote story mapping
•  Before the session:
–  Prepare a document
–  Prime the input – business goals, user story,
personas, scope of session

Remote story mapping
•  During the session:
–  One person shares screen
–  Review method and show examples as needed
–  Moderator introduces story mapping activity – business
goals, user story, personas, scope of session
–  Timebox your activities (examples):
•  Brainstorm activities > tasks > details (10 min each)
•  Share and add unique entries to map (30 min to ‘n’ hours)
•  Organize timelines and add markup (15 – 30 min)
•  Review and prioritize the task details (30 min to ‘n’ hours)

Story mapping – our use
•  Initially doing in person
–  Experimented with one local dev team
–  Shared with other local design teams
–  One design team led a large face-to-face session
•  Now doing more remote
–  One x-functional team experimenting w/ spreadsheet
–  One x-functional team experimenting w/ graphical tool

•  Three teams have used or actively practicing

Team rhythm

Problem finding & understanding
•  Doing workshops, interviews, surveys
•  Sharing synthesis value + outcomes w/ teams
•  Using hypothesis-driven exploration
•  Hosting regular UX evaluation sessions

Hypothesis-driven exploration

Co-making / co-learning
•  Team book club
•  Story mapping
•  Brainstorming and aﬃnity mapping
•  Design studio method

Team Book Club
2
1
3

Design studio method
•  Facilitated time-boxed sketching to
generate, iterate, converge
•  Done individually or in groups over
hours / days
•  Follows pattern:
Understand
THE PROBLEM
Sketch
A SOLUTION
Present
THE IDEAS
Critique
THE IDEAS

Benefits
•  Collaborate to understand together
•  Generate ideas from diﬀerent perspectives
•  Solidify ideas via sharable artifacts
•  Create shared ownership
•  Allow for open and honest critique
•  Force participants to defend concepts

Design studio method – our use
•  Weekly (at least)

•  Initially doing in person
–  Experimented with one local team
–  Shared with other local teams
•  Now doing more remote
–  Experimented with one distributed team
–  Shared with other teams via a multi-site workshop
•  From one x-functional team to 4 – and growing

59
•  Everyone is keen, but …!
•  Some companies have limited to ‘0’
tolerance of 3rd party cloud-based tools!
•  Collaborating remotely without exposing
intellectual property is possible …!
Remote design studio method

Components
•  Audio: Telephone for discussion
•  Screen sharing: Web conference software of choice (Citrix
GoTo Meeting, IBM SmartCloud Meeting)
•  Video hardware for sharing your sketches
–  IPEVO USB document camera for live capture of your sketches
•  Video hardware for sharing ‘you’
–  Webcam for live capture of ‘you’—e.g., built-in or iSight
•  Social software – for sharing a live image of yourself
–  Google Plus ‘Circle’ + Google Hangout
•  Sketching media and tools – same as for in person studios

Work area setup

Sketching in action

Benefits and limitations
•  Beneﬁts
–  Inclusive – you just need the cameras!
–  Low-cost – almost a face-to-face meeting w/ the travel cost
–  Faster processing and sharing of digital sketches + notes
•  Limitations
–  Technical diﬃculties are likely – test runs are critical
–  Slightly more preparation time of remote participants (e.g.,
gathering materials and understanding the tools)
–  More team roles needed (e.g., moderator + someone to
quickly capture and share output from one round to next)

Learn more
UIE Webinar
Sketching for
Understanding
By Nathan Curtis
Eightshapes
Blog
Sharing Sketches
Remotely
By Nathan Curtis
Eightshapes
UX Magazine
Introduction to Design
Studio Methodology
By Will Evans
Semantic Foundry

Making inroads
2
Story mapping
toward a backlog
(remote)
1
Collaboration w/
PM on principles,
vision and release
themes; feature
teams for cross-
cutting themes
3
Research and
synthesis input to
plan & hypotheses
validation
6
UX activities part of
team rhythm:
•  design studio
•  usability sessions
•  story playbacks
4
Co-making in
weekly design
studios (remote)
5
Regular evaluation
sessions to reﬁne
experience (remote)

Motivation
Context
Solutions
Consider cause or
in your context
aﬀect change
Activity #3
Identify potential
to try out in your
context

•  Brainstorm solutions from a distance
–  You now have some perspective on your partner’s
challenges and context
–  As someone at a distance, reﬂect on possible
solutions to your partner’s challenges
–  Use post-its to write down all the possibilities you
can think of
–  Place post-its on your partner’s world maps/sketches

•  Materials: Post-its, sharpies, your world
maps/sketches

•  Discuss solutions
–  Take turns sharing your solution ideas with your
partner
•  Time:
–  10 minutes: 5 minutes each to share (we will signal at
5 minutes)

Conclusion

How are we doing?
•  Is making software more satisfying for
everyone involved and resulting in quality
outcomes?
•  Observations
–  Happier people – more engaged throughout cycle
–  Less design – focused on shared goals and getting in!
–  Quality outcomes for our customers? – so far the
feedback is positive, e.g., they appreciate the
engagement, the speed, and the less-is-more UIs

Solution impact at-a-glance
Planning
Together
Finding and
Understanding
Co-Making
Late breaking changes
X
X
Too ‘feature’ oriented
X
X
Impractical designs
X
Engineering driven
X
X
X
Unused designs
X
X
Problem solving
oriented
X
Diﬀerent workﬂows
X
X
Distributed teams
X
X

A few last take aways …
1.  Change takes time – a lot of time

Timeline example
2009
2011
2012
2014
2010
2013
Partner w/ tech leads to inﬂuence dev plans

Lead cross-functional feature teams

Plan w/ PM + tech leads

Lead design studios

Engage dev peers in synthesis activities

Book club

Change
project
teams

Increased
emphasis
on design

Review + periodically collaborate w/ individual devs

2.  Relationships matter – both bottom-up
and top-down

2.  Relationships matter – both bottom-up and
top-down
3.  Small changes keep you motivated
 
To keep your momentum and motivation up, get in the
habit of accomplishing small victories along the way. 
– Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Discussion

References

Sources for methods (adapted)
Activity 1 : The Breakup Letter
•  Hanington, B., Martin, B.,
Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research
Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design
Eﬀective Solutions, Rockport Publishers (2012)

Activity 2 : Welcome to My World
•  Gray, D., Brown, S., Macanufo, J.,
Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers,
and Changemakers, O’Reilly Media, 1st Edition (2010)

Activity 3 : Getting Distance
•  Heath, C., Heath, D.,
Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work,
Random House Canada (2013)

Sources for further learning
Agile / Lean UX Methods
•  Gothelf, J., Seiden, J. (editor), Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience, O'Reilly Media (2013)
•  Ramsey, A., Designing with Agile Workshop: Fast, Effective Methods that Work (Anders Ramsey – Blog, 2011)

Design Principles
•  Hess, W., Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX (Slideshare, 2011)

Design Studio Method
•  Curtis, N., Sketching for Understanding (UIE Webinar, 2013)
•  Evans, W., Introduction to Design Studio Methodology (UX Magazine – Article, 2011)
•  Evans, W., The Design of Design Studio (UX Magazine – Article, 2011)
•  Evans, W., Design Studio and Agile UX: Process and Pitfalls (UX Magazine – Article, 2011)
•  Zaki Warfel, T., The Design Studio Method (Agile UX NYC 2012 – Vimeo, 2012)

Feature Teams
•  Larman, C., Vodde, B., Feature Team Primer (PDF, 2010) 

General Theory, Practice, and Inspiration
•  Brown, T., Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Harper Business, 1st Edition (2009)
•  Buxton, B., Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design, Morgan Kaufmann, 1st Edition (2007)
•  Cuddy, A., Your body language shapes who you are, TED Talk (2012)
•  Fried, J., Heinemeier Hansson, D., Rework, Crown Business (2010)
•  Merholz, P., Wilkens, T., Schauer, B., Verba, D.,
Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design, O'Reilly Media (2008)
•  Victor, B., Inventing on Principle: Living for a Cause (Canadian University Software Engineering Conference, CUSEC 2012 – Vimeo, 2012)
•  Wellings, P., Gray, C., Turning a Developer-driven Organization into a UX Company (UX Week – Vimeo, 2010)

Remote Collaboration Methods
•  Curtis, N., Efficient Sketching Studios With Remote Participants (EightShapes – Blog, 2011)
•  Gothelf, J., Designing with remote teams (Jeff Gothelf – Blog, 2013)

Strategy and Planning Methods
•  Milan, M., Ladner, S., Backcasting: How I learned to stop predicting and help my clients (IA Summit – Slideshare with audio, 2007)
•  Milan, M., Backcasting 101: Collaborative Strategy Development for Information Architects (IA Summit – Slideshare, 2008)
•  Patton, J., The new user story baclog is a map (Agile Product Design – Blog, 2008)
•  Patton, J., Story mapping for UX Practitioners: Tying Agile and UX together (UIE Podcast, 2011) 

Synthesis Theory and Methods
•  Kolko, J., Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioners Guide to the Methods and Theories of Synthesis, Oxford University Press (2011)
79!

Thank You!

Advancing UX in Your Organization (Fluxible Conference, September 2013)

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