Why are we asking our clients to jump through hoops, having to go through our elaborate processes to get to the outcome they seek. We expect them to enter OUR world, to do things the purist way, no matter how long it takes or how it may stretch their investment, we push and convince and sell for doing things our way.
Do we stop to consider what is even more important than solving their challenge the ‘right’ way? Do we take the time to consider how they might experience the problem solving journey WE take THEM on? Sometimes we are so focussed on the customers we design for, we forget we are also in the business of experience design… how do we design the experience with OUR business for OUR CLIENTS.
How can we get our clients to a working solution, as soon as possible, within their constraints, and WITHOUT making THEM jump through all OUR hoops? And how in the spirit of co-create and co-design do we find the balance of collaborating without draining our already time constrained clients?
We need to adapt the elaborateness of our design sprints to fit the client. Work within your frameworks but these frameworks must be flexible enough to cater for the breath of your clientele. We need to take the time to really get to know our clients and how best to get them/their projects to the finish line with the greatest impact both during the experience and at the end.
Allow for a lighter way of moving through a design sprint for the less complex project or smaller client or simpler challenge:
DISCOVERY
Succinct, informal yet well structured conversations/sessions with only key decision makers and role players.
These can be as short as 20/30 mins.
Asking the right questions will pull all necessary information to the fore. Ask for access to the right people and supporting material for detail and reference.
IMMERSION
A contextual inquiry allows for rich insight gathering while ‘in-situ’ where a days immersion can easily equate to numerous one-on-one ‘interviews’, observations, and real-life experience of answering essential questions in the research phase.
This approach also saves on planning and admin time required in the setting up of more structured insight gathering methodologies.
ANALYSIS
Quick 10 min post mortem sessions after each encounter during the immersion phase where one recaps on the key learning/theme coming through. This means we are analyzing whilst immersing.
An analysis framework is a good supporting document to note these takeaways throughout immersion to easily organize thoughts and identify the golden thread emerging.
Infusing analysis into immersion helps to save time and effort, therefore reducing the weight of a further analysis phase.
IDEATION
Make room for initial ideation in your analysis framework - any ideas that come to the fore during immersion and analysis are noted to be addressed now.
Create 15min co-create sessions with key people that stood out in the immersion phase to further flesh out their ideas (and yours). This also helps with early buy-in.
CREATION
First designs can be on pen and paper. Reducing time drain on tools to create a low-fi design, a sketch is a good enough place to start when we want to ready ourselves for initial testing of a concept.
THEN invest time and effort in iterations that follow.
TESTING
Test from the first pen and paper design with accessible people such as colleagues, friends, family just to get a first feel of feedback. This is almost a soundboard phase if you like so that we can spend our time, money and effort on the real areas requiring testing and validation.
THEN formalize once the initial and obvious tweaks have been made.
To force a smaller client, or one with a less complex challenge into a longer drawn out design sprint is not okay. These clients will not see the value in what for them, is an over engineered process.
You CAN take well thought out and strategic shortcuts to reach their goals. There are ways to short circuit your lengthy creative resolution processes, and they don’t have to compromise the outcome. It’s more about being ‘streetwise’ rather than ‘book/theory wise’ and finding approaches that work to fit within your client, not clients to fit your approaches.
Advisory for creatives: “Solving niche challenges design businesses face”.
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