UserTesting takes a collaborative design-led approach to product development. For them, this starts with team building and creating team norms, making it safe and normal to collaborate using visual methods. They understand that this change doesn't happen overnight, and forcing inexperienced teams into grandiose design sessions can be stressful and counter-productive.
For Maura, it was about taking the existing design methodologies that she was familiar with and figuring out how to apply them to her mostly-remote team of designers, engineers and researchers. Her solution is an approach that alleviates the pressure and cognitive burden of lengthy ideation sessions while making sure everyone's engaged and learning together.
Her team incorporates design exercises into mini-methods -- abbreviated activities around concept sorting, voting, ideation sessions and the like -- that can be incorporated into daily stand-ups or weekly meetings to get people involved, on board, and to make design thinking a habit. By using the mini-methods approach her interdisciplinary team can flex their design muscles gradually while arming them to solve both day-to-day and large scale problems, together.
A classic ideation session framed around a 'How Might We' (HMW) prompt is an exercise Maura uses with the team. *see above image
Two key steps for this mini-method:
This mini-method template is ready to be duplicated and used with your own team.
Create a mural in your workspace from the template below:
