Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Fairy Lai The PingPong Room where the creatives were born!

One day when I was working on putting my notes of the user interviews to the excel file, one of my developer colleagues came to me and asked, “Hey, what are you doing these days?”

Well, I wanted to tell him that this week I spent most of my time talking with users and getting their feedback about our current MVP, and I’m collecting design requirements to prepare for the following ideation section. I’m also going to do some research on competitors as well as getting a balance between our business goals and users’ needs…

But it all sounds alien.

It seems I’m not doing anything about “design” these a few weeks as I’m not drawing sketches/making wireframes/polishing interfaces/creating animations…I’m the only designer, working with 15 engineers, and most of my co-workers are taking me as the “make it look pretty” person. I’m not blaming anyone, as I know it.

But still, this question is really a trigger that got me start thinking about letting more people know what I’m doing. I believe communication weights a lot so I decided, I should do something, to bring the designer’s mindset to the place, and involve people into my design process.

Preparations

PingPong table as the work station

I’m lucky that I have a lot of freedom on how to finish my work, so I got support from the team to have a design exercise. And the following is how I prepared the exercise.

1/Define the goal

Involve people into the design process to better connect to the team

2/Choose the topics

I have just finished some user interviews and got some great feedback on the current product. However, some of the feedback are too specific, to have a more open-minded environment, I decided to focus on the design direction rather than specific details. To better facilitate the exercise, I also summarized my research findings into two personas.

3/Decide the format

To better involve people as well as showing as much as my workflow, I divided the exercise into two parts: ideation brainstorming and sketching.

4/Time, location, agenda and materials

Book a room in the office and find a time slot that works for most of the team. Create an agenda clearly displaying the time. Also get some materials: sticky notes, index cards, markers, pens, white paper, and tape

5/Recruit participants

To let people have an overall understanding of design process, I want to have different team members joined. But I also know people are busy, so I sent out a note in our public channel to ask for volunteers. And I’m glad that we have a very diverse team: 2 from the sales team, 3 from the developing team, 1 from the QA team, and me from the design team.

6/Set up and, start!

I spent some time setting up the room, feeling a bit sorry for taking up the room for ping pong for two hours…

Roll out the fun part!

When I was at school, I had some experience working with classmates on ideation exercise, however this time it is the first time that I act as a moderator and work with non-designers, so I was feeling very anxious. And this is how it goes.

1/Explain HOW IT WORKS

I first briefly talked about the agenda, and started introducing the concept of design-thinking methodology, the deliverables at each stage as well as how I incorporated it in the design workflow. Next, I explained that this design exercise is in the ideate part of the cycle and it is important for the next steps. Finally, I presented the two key personas of our target users.

2/Introduce the rules

As the team is not from the design background, I set up some rules to keep an open, active and encouraging environment to boost creativity. Emphasize that there are no bad ideas, don’t judge anybody’s idea and everyone is creative 🙂

3/Brain-storming

The two topics are: how to get users onboard and how to help users communicate better in the system. I made some crazy ideas of a mobile app to encourage people to work out(make a robot, program your mom to call you, post a note automatically on Facebook if you don’t workout…) as an example, and emphasize again focusing more on quantity then quality as this is an ideation exercise.

I provided some context for the problems and ask everyone to come up with ideas as well as putting them on sticky notes. After 6 mins, everyone is going to present their ideas and put the notes on the white board.Then we will have a short group discussion.We had 25 mins for each brainstorming section, but time flies, so it is very important to set up a timer. Google has a very handy one.

4/Sketching

Amazing sketches!

In this exercise, I asked everyone to redesign the dashboard of our product on white paper.It was fun to see how people visualize their ideas and it impressed me that people are so creative!

The same as the brainstorming session, I gave them some time to sketch, then they will present their ideas. After that, everyone is going to vote for their favourite ones, as you can see the one on the top right got 7 votes! So he is the winner!

After the party…

It was such a great fun in that 90 mins. We successfully kept things in time, we got many creative ideas and most importantly, I feel I’m connected with the rest of the team now.

After party…

The next step is to organize those great ideas on the white board, group them and discuss which ones can be further developed.

It was such a great experience for me to moderate the design exercise and I feel so lucky to have wonderful teammates who understand, support me and are willing to invest their precious time to try out something new. I definitely learned millions of things in this exercise.

In the past time, I was struggling as the design team of one, feeling lonely that there is nobody to turn to when comes to design decision. However, I’m feeling much more comfortable now, because they have participated in the design process. The product itself consists input from all over the company. Not every team produced great design, but a great design will always be teamwork.

In the presentation of this exercise, I made the following slides.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Here are some online resources I found helpful for moderating a design exercise. They have some advice on the size of the team as well as what you need to prepare before and after.

How to moderate a brain storm session and get results

How to lead successful brainstorming session

Tips for successful brainstorming

If you want to build connections with the rest of the team and involve people into your design process, starting an exercise is a good choice. If you happen to be the first time, I have some tips for you.

1/Build a diverse team

Make sure to bring members from all over the company as people can spread out their ideas quickly. If you have one member from the sales team, the whole sales team is going to learn from that member later.

2/Have an open mind

Some people will say they can’t draw, some will say they don’t think their ideas are good enough…Always be open to all of that and don’t judge anyone’s ideas. That will create an open atmosphere where more and more creative ideas will emerge

3/Make sure everyone is involved

In a group discussion, people are easily led by one or two focus, and it is the moderator’s responsibility to make the lowest voice heard. That is why I gave people some individual time to think about their ideas and present before the group discussion. An experienced moderator can start a discussion while catching every idea and moderating the flow of the discussion. But it is hard for someone who is new.

4/Always track the time!

It is hard to stop people’s discussion when it is time. So we can wait for a while, but don’t forget you are a moderator, and choose a right time to step in and cut it out as you have some more later. Also, keeping everything in time will leave a good impression on your group members as they feel their time is valued. So they will be more willing to participate the next time!

5/Just do it.

This is the most important one. As a new designer, as the sole designer, we doubt ourselves a lot. We may have a hard time persuading ourselves that we can bring the design mindset to the company and let people see the value of design. We may fall into the trap and start thinking whether it is worthy to put time in this. Based on my own experience, the design exercise was very valuable and it connected me with the rest of the company better. Therefore, if you believe this is what you should do, just do it!

Research, prepare, and speak up. Ask the manager, present the idea and start the exercise. The worst thing is they will say NO, but so what? We can always bring this up again with a more prepared mind.

Hope this will help who are in the same situation as me.

I would also like to share the agenda for the exercise as well as the PingPong pattern for the slides here.

Fairy is a product designer who is dedicated to utilizing technology to better connect the world. Welcome to connect me via Dribbble, Linkedin, and Twitter.

In the PingPong Room: How I moderated a design exercise as the sole designer was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the PingPong Room: How I moderated a design exercise as the sole designer

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