UX Artefact example #014 - UX is not always sexy

Process is more important than polished product when talking about UX Projects. It can be challenging to showcase a lot of the output from early UX stages, plus, a lot of it can be fairly boring to look at..

This piece forms part of the requirements gathering process. Being able to source initial goals, design and facilitate activities, put together an agenda and then manage the attendees is all part of the high level process of this stage.

Here I am holding a validation workshop with several key stakeholders (clients and users alike). The main goal was to validate and evolve our initial ideas and concepts around a particular application.

Despite having 3 hours for the morning workshop I needed the attendees to be prepped and primed ahead of walking into the meeting - I needed them to be thinking in a particular manner, around a certain subject area. So the team and I designed a pre-workshop activity that we wanted doing beforehand. We asked them "What Tweets will you (and customers) be saying about the application/website in 5 years time?" - please bring as many tweets as possible. This provided an initial goal and mindset by getting them thinking about current and future based events.

The first 'ice breaker' activity I then posed was a post-it note aimed question around technology "What can you easily do that your parents weren't able to?". Place as many on the wall within 10 mins, then openly discuss each one.

Second 'ice breaker' we asked them "What will your grand children easily be able to do that you cant currently do?". Initially a bit tougher question, but we got quite a few post-its in the 10 mins. Again, place on the wall and openly discuss each one.

We then went into the main reason for the workshop: validating and evolving our future thoughts and designs around a particular application.

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