How do YOU design products?
Sure, we hear about agile and lean methodologies, about prototyping and testing, about minimum viable products (MVPs) and quick releases. But what does that look like in your organization? We’d love to hear! And while you think about it, here’s a peek inside our organization’s process.
One of my own key goals is to encourage empathy throughout our organization—putting yourself in the customer’s and user’s shoes. User Experience (UX) design shouldn’t be a box that we tick to say, “yup, it’s usable.” Thinking in an empathetic fashion can’t be isolated to a single phase where the UX team “approves” the project. We need empathy about our customers and our users to be present throughout our organization and its process of designing products.
How do we do that? One way is to hold product workshops or “design studios,” which are loads of fun! The idea is to bring a diverse array of people together and run through some exercises that generate new ideas and encourage empathy. We bring in colleagues from different teams, and they each bring to the table different backgrounds, expertise, and experiences they’ve had with customers and users.
Last week, we gathered some of our colleagues together and split them into a few small groups. We assigned each group a role, and then we outlined a few scenarios that our customers and users might experience. We asked them to get into the mindset of their role, and then to identify the needs they had within the scenario (the what), the way they experienced or addressed those needs (the how), and the pain points they experienced (the urghhh!). Then we asked them to outline their ideal experience.
Design studios like this are a fun way to build bridges within your organization, involve a diverse group of people in the product design process, and encourage empathy for your customers and users throughout the organization.
That’s just one of the tactics that we use here at Novus!
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