Design workshops
I have facilitated a number of workshops across email design, product animation and discovery workshops for developers. The case study below focusses on one series of design workshops.
"How might we design a responsive website that looks, feels and behaves like Trade Me?"
When it came to trying out the refreshed branding onto our products, workshops proved to be the most efficient and fun way to make it happen. Following the Google Design Sprint method, we redesigned the Trade Me website one week at a time.
Creative exercises like Crazy 8’s and Worst Solution are really helpful to start divergent thinking.
Design Sprints
A Design Sprint follows a 5-day structure, starting with a goal and ending with a tested prototype. The plan was to have 4 rounds of Design Sprints to get across the whole site. Each sprint team included designers from across the company. A senior designer was selected to be the Lead on each sprint, working with a dedicated facilitator, which was my role.
As facilitator I'm practiced at managing the energy in the room over the week, keeping the team to the schedule, providing coaching to the design Lead as they needed it, and ensuring the outcomes were clearly documented.
Setting up dedicated war rooms make the most of participant’s time.
Final Sprint
At the end we held one last sprint, with the purpose of reviewing the outputs for consistency and identifying design patterns. This time it was my turn to be the Lead, with Roxy facilitating. We made some important decisions during this last sprint which have gone on to be documented as design patterns in our Design System site, Tangram.
Team: Roxy Huntington (project lead), Mark Huser, David Wright, Zsuzsa Vadasz, Alister Coyne, Cody Iddings.
Keeping things on track by breaking down the steps into small, achievable goals.
Post-its everywhere!
Lean user testing of prototypes
Meeting with stakeholders on progress and outcomes
