Lessons

Lesson Info

The Facilitation Framework

Stop, collaborate and listen, you guys remember that genius artist she's smiling, you know, art is is know who you're too young finalized. Thank you, gino. This is a little different thing is, listen, synthesizing document you could put it to the beat didn't didn't and okay, now you can all right. That's what we do listen synthesize and document that's really what I'm doing during a session I'm using me I'm using these exercises to listen to understand you know what the client is saying neutrally I'm understanding and prioritising which chris, you really want to know how to prioritize and I'll talk I'll talk about how to prioritize this exercise the goals one is one but I'm also prioritizing in every single exercise that we're going to do. I'm prioritizing and then documenting live remember I talked about it and multitasking and multi threading I'm doing all those things at the same time how do I not freak out here's the secret I have a framework and it's a very clear framework it's in...

my head this is the first time ever that many, many people are getting to see how I do it because I actually have to document it which you, it's it's a lot of work, but the agenda is actually your best friend. It keeps you on time and on track, and you're doing live facilitation, you know, designers, creative people, we don't want to have too much. You want to be too stressful? Yeah, let it flow resist that urge, um, aligning everybody in real time in the room. I did that for you guys. The early on is everybody in the room a line, and you'll see me do it again, getting agreement that those are the things that you want to get out of the session brand user goals. I just talked about that user stories. This is the middle where if you're a software developer, the user story, customer journeys, you can call it different things there's, different ways of doing them there's deep, they're shallow, you're going to see me do them quickly insider, live session so I can go really deep. I have to keep it leg, bullet point style, it will be sufficient to guide me to the solutions. The other thing is auditing who is the competition? What does the current software actually looked like? These air all steps that you have to do any user experience anyway? We're just doing them live in the room. Synthesis is really about bringing different things together and making decisions based on those and documenting it so it's a sketching part and finally their review which is is this what we wanted to do? Here's a sample agenda for day one and day two. Same principles the actual timing. Five minutes notice that nothing is an hour. It's all thirty minutes. Attention is something that people do not have tried not to do things for too long. Try to run things fast if they look at the end of the session and it was like, wow, that was a little we covered a lot of stuff. That's good. Now you don't want to run it too fast. You have to feel the room and you'll be able to do that and I'll show you a little bit. How do you feel the room? So this is a technique again for feeling the room. What's each person want to get out of the session? I did this with you guys in a session. I'll actually have them prioritized, choose one, you only get to choose one and then I'll put them all together. Our goal is to accomplish a goal three and go one and two also do go to this. This look like what we want to do. Great. Now everybody is happy on a line and I'm going to track that it also shows that you're listening to them, you're there for them. You're there to facilitate, you're not a genius designer, you're not like you're going to tell him what to do. That's the worst thing you can possibly do, you're going to let then actually do it for you. They'll feel like you're the one doing it, but you're not. So those are the three exercises that I just showed you. This is what they look like in a white board form to defining the brand, the profiles and the goals. This is, I can't repeat enough, allow for lots of ideas, then prioritize, features ideas, goals, needs boom, prioritize overtime. So you brainstorm divergent thinking and you prioritize every single exercise is going to be like that. You're going to create a minimum minimum in this case in here today for the of three, two, two, three user stories in a session, you can create less, you can create more there's, sometimes not enough time. This is what a user story could look like. This is a simple version. I'm going to show you a slightly different version than this today, but really, ultimately is the journey of the customer. How did they find out how to thee engage what makes him come back? What makes him recommend it to a friend? You're going to notice this in very many different methodologies and user experience there is many ways of doing it, so remember there is no right or wrong process it's simply about the ability to define whether user needs translate that then into an actual site so here's a client requirements document which I know well, you know I'm going to speak in spanish and yeah, this is really dense, but I actually sit down with the client and I translated it into index cards now it's visual oh, I get it now where before I'm like, I'm not going to read your dang document, but I didn't read it with them in a live session. All of these, by the way, are examples of a real session all of these things are really session with a company that the software here in silicon valley or here in the bay area synthesizing prioritize so from this to making current products with annotations to discussing and prioritising the new features and translating them all of it was about surfacing system izing and visualizing and taking complex and confusing and organizing it. So finally it's really sketchy and re sketching in a green don't worry if it isn't perfect, you know I'm not the best of skechers and I might have wasted a lot of money in our school, but because then you actually do this and in this session I had a person with me I had a u x designer who's very good she had just graduated from general assembly and she was working with me as an apprentice she documented everything immediately after the session and then we showed it to the client but here's the thing the fidelity level from doing it live is really high because you're just right there with a client and there immediately seen the result there isn't a week or two weeks afterwards there seen it there they're saying yes you got agreement you could go code if you wanted to and come back that's at the speed that it started usedto work and that's how most start ups that I know are fairly successful work they work fast they work in the room here is a session and here's what the results look like there's templates I have templates for the exercises I'm going to share this with share these with you today you're going to see me use these here's the final like inside the inside the actors studio here's what I'm actually doing in a very complicated looking diagram this is the canvas this is where I'm gonna be sketching I'm taking a summary of the user story of the steps of the user took we did a site map with the client I'm taking that section that is this page this is the top level I'm taking the value proposition the top needs of the user which I end up summarizing them the user says they needed x y and z the value proposition to users we give you x y and z like we saw that problem it's just like doing two other says you know you would want it's not that complicated I do use the top brand attributes as a filter mechanism I might not use them explicitly in the architecture aspect they do affect the visual design a lot more, but look, if you say it's exclusive and charming we can really begin dealing with language we can begin dealing with what products we offer an exclusive offer only for you we have friendly you know what the language is going to be overall it's in writing, then the top three efficiency top three awareness tough year revenue goals are what we're hitting so here in the revenue goals for this particular client this is a real client. One of their things was younger. Well, this is in younger, younger customers offseason reynolds is a resort bookings revenue bookings is number one. Would that not make sense? How do we get them to book more? So I'm looking at all of these things at once and talking through the sketching of the page this is something that architect has usually or that you exit signer has the opportunity to do on their own quietly and reflect not here here you're doing it in front of the client and talking and going back and forth and it doesn't matter I guess you know it's okay it's not gonna be perfect I'm gonna be right it's going to be wrong but the reality is that the synthesis of all these things is what you would do anyway all I'm doing is collapsing them all into one short burst it's kind of like if you go from doing it at home on your own to doing it in like master chef kitchen or something like that with a timer you have to do it really fast it's a great way to learn a little scary sometimes so simple things like the taxonomy that you know for those of you who are transitioning into user experience top down left to right more important, less important it's a fairly kind of simple construct these air the primary sections of the site these air secondaries these things that are for example up in the top like you know log in and some of the other functions there's a footer down here where all those things are fairly basic modularity is going to be something that's going to be important in your structure of the site where there's a long page format whether it's a phone a lot of people asked what the inputs into the decision making you have to look at what are the current design? You know, parameters and trends that are happening everything is mobile now what are the platforms like one of the paradigms and that you need to at least keep up to that? But the reality is that once you know those things they're things you can find out fairly quickly top ten trends and web design attempts trends and mobile design you you're a user so you know what's going on for the most part on dh it's not plagiarism is simply those air standards and software those are the things you have to look at in addition to all of these other factors to do it ok, I'll say that's a lot of stuff it's really overwhelming how do you do it? One step at a time in the process it's all in the agenda you're not doing it all at the same time and you have to let go you have to let go of being perfect, you can admit it, you can walk into the session and and say I haven't done this before. This is the first time it's an experiment you willing to try it out with me? I might be a little bit slower if you know all those things and at the end of the day I'll make it look really easy but I've been doing it for, you know, fifteen years and I I love doing it so for you guys there's only one barrier to doing it which is starting and doing it and you probably already done it so the framework will add to helping it will lower the amount of it orations you have substantially you're going to go from zero to decisions really fast and it seems that you exes really technical and has lots of jargon look it's all about listening, understanding and scene ii at the end of the day you can get rid of all the jargon you can forget about like all the stuff get the books understand and know what it is all the exercises site maps, wire frames all these things I really usually don't even care I mean I just I know I need them and I do them but I don't care about the technical aspects of them it's about creating these making it easy so you have two intuitively know what it is that it needs to be clarity is a clear you've asked yourself that and something that we don't remember or that we forget a little bit sometimes the best software the best experiences produce emotions the best user experience designers produce that it produce amazing products produce emotion whether that emotion is pleasure like oh I'm not worried about it because it's so easy to do that's that's an emotion like your eases it's really pleasurable it doesn't matter but it's really about that and these three things here at the end listening, which is a huge part of the process scene and this is not just the visual aspect of scene like I can see you know, the stuff up or the coms this is seen in the third I like, you know, spirituals sense really seen you I I see you you know, when you know you meet somebody on the road and they go I were in a relationship I see you I see who you really are you need to actually do that for the user it takes time but you get to that point to you khun sense the users and then at the end you have to feel it has to it has to it's logical and it works that makes sense, but if the experience as a whole you don't feel it, it doesn't just doesn't feel right it just doesn't it's hard and kinds and do that I'll know when I see it they're not saying they know when they see it visually they're saying I need to feel that it's right? And I'm not right now feeling that it's right? You're seeing it and it looks formally right but it's might not be right so those are the three things and that's actually going to be my second tattoo on the side those three things not in that art not in that visual. But those are the criteria of really being able to do really successful interaction with people. I've really been able that this is a secret to relationships. This is the secret to the whole world right here.