Adaptive Path Blog

Alexa, Teresa and I recently finished a project that, from the beginning, had all the signs of trouble: a busy client team working weekends on other projects, an aggressive schedule, a tight budget and my own pre-planned vacation during the critical architecture phase. While this project had a lot of challenges, and was quite intense at times, we had fun and came up with some really well executed designs that we all love. The project ended with a very satisfied client team, too.

I was happily surprised when our client made a point of commending my team for our client management skills. At first I politely tried to diminish our part in making it such a great experience “Well you’re a great client!” and “That’s why you hire outside consultants!”, but he pursued his point by illustrating how his other vendors’ relationships hadn’t been handled the same way and more importantly, what we did right. His feedback seemed worth sharing; here’s a bit of a summary:

1. We rethought the design problem rather than simply executing their requirements. We took their ideas and vision into consideration and then took a step back and rethought the problem. The result was a refreshing and unexpected approach that they liked much better than their own initial ideas.
2. We scoped the project according to the budget and timeline allowed. The client needed a lot of work done in a short amount of time. So much work that there was no way it could all be done in the time allotted. The approach we took was to work closely with the client engineers and UX team to reveal only the essential design elements needed. We delivered only primary screens, a few key scenarios and prototyped interactions that needed more clarification. We also delivered design principles to enable the client team to stay focused on what’s important once we’re no longer there. What we didn’t do, which they appreciated, was deliver a big, fat document of every permutation possible. Instead we delivered high-level design guidelines.

The Team’s Approach — There were a number of client relations techniques we used in making the project a success. Here are just a few:

Trust — We kept our eye on building and maintaining trust with the client throughout the project. We did this initially with a full day hands-on workshop that included key members from the Product Management, Engineering and UX teams. This built rapport, inclusion and unified our vision of the product and our goals for the project. We maintained the trust through frequent review periods and showing our thinking along the way (even half-baked ideas were shared).

Listening — We listened to the client’s ideas and vision, but didn’t limit our designs to how they thought that vision should be executed. We took their vision and added in our understanding of user needs, consumer behavior and context of use as the launching point for our designs.

Setting Expectations — We had an extremely aggressive schedule for this project. We set a schedule with reviews and milestone deliverables, but we communicated heavily on the idea that “things may change” and we would “see what we can get done by x date”. This prepared the client for when we delivered sketches and rough ideas instead of polished designs.

Flexibility — When the client called and asked for a redesign a few days before our last big deliverable, I didn’t let it phase me. I welcomed his need to get the designs right. I didn’t even mention the impact to the schedule/scope, I focused on simply listening to his needs. What was missing in the current designs? We immediately set a face-to-face meeting with the client and his Director to better understand their concerns. It was a hands-on design session, where we sketched through ideas on the markerboard. After that meeting, we talked about schedule impact. The question I asked was if we could slip the schedule and if not, where would we need to cut scope?

Under-promise, Over-deliver — This is a technique I try to employ with all of my projects if I can. Of course my clients reading this will now know, but hopefully they won’t hold it against me! I try to scope a project that is realistic in what my team is capable of in the time allotted, but I pad in a little time for unplanned client meetings, idea gestation periods, wait time and general unknowns. In most cases, that padding time gets used up by unforeseen circumstances, but that’s OK because we don’t go over the budget or beyond the schedule. Sometimes there are extra hours to which I try to over deliver: more screens, more scenarios, more concepts, more interaction explorations, more annotations - what ever might be needed to wow the client.

Since the schedule was so aggressive with this project, I was honest with the client and explained that I wasn’t sure how much we could deliver, but I promised a minimum amount (which was safely low). Not surprisingly, he figured out this technique mid-project and luckily he saw the value in it and we had a good laugh about it. He appreciated how flexible we were throughout the project and the only reason we were able to be so flexible was because of the extra hours I had included.

Desire for Success — Philosophically we all have to remember that everyone involved in a project truly has the best interest of the project at hand. They may not be approaching the project in the way we’d like, or they may have bad ideas, but their intentions are for a successful project. Rarely do clients or colleagues knowingly and willfully undermine a project. We need to always remember that their intentions are good.

Last but certainly not least is in how to be a good client. Dan Saffer composed a great essay on how to be a good client, but I thought I’d share a few specific traits our client possessed that enabled us to take the approach we did. These traits allowed us to deliver the best possible designs:

1. We had a client who set a vision and was open to the possibilities of where that vision might be taken.
2. The client gave us access to all the right people. Their program manager did an astounding job of getting the right people in the room with us each and every time.
3. They also had a system for decisions by proxy. If a decision maker was unable to attend, they identified a proxy who would speak on the behalf of the decision maker.
4. The UX, Engineering, and Product Management teams all have a deep respect and regard for one another. Yes they disagreed (lots of heated debates!), but they did so respectfully and with humor.
5. They leveraged our time together as efficiently as possible. Issues that didn’t pertain directly to our design problem were tabled for later discussions (without us).

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At our recent MX Conference, we set out to capture emerging insights from the speakers using our graphic recording skills. With 4-5 colored markers fanning out from between our fingers at any given moment (picture a wolverine claw), we illuminated the speakers’ talks with memorable visuals and colorful typography. (Pictures coming soon.) On the last day of the conference, as I was running around with a pack of sticky notes trying to identify common themes across talks, it occurred to me: What if the conference participants were involved in this process?

At every conference I’ve attended, I’ve heard people express that they get as much out of interacting with other attendees as from the speakers. Everyone has a story to tell, but there’s only so much people can articulate in response to the FAQ, “What did you think of the talk?” It’s made me think: As design researchers, we often use hands-on, participatory techniques to draw latent insights out of our participants. Why don’t we use these same strategies to draw out and capture conference participants’ ideas?

What are some activities that could encourage deeper conversations and equip people to document their thoughts? What could conferences do to give people something to “triangulate” around — besides the wonderful food? Here are a few I’ve seen (not only at conferences, but at social events, college dorm walls, our office bathroom, etc.):

Graffiti Wall: Put up a giant piece of paper with some initial structure and encourage collaborative graphic recording — where participants can add their own notes, sketches and insights to a giant mural. Stickers and collaging images and words could be provided as well.

Open Whiteboards: Write questions on giant sticky notes (e.g., “What is service design?”) and put them in the halls where people can write on it during breaks. It could give people something to talk about while providing a forum for expression.

Five Minute Madness: We do this in our staff meetings: Someone makes an audacious statement that they may or may not agree with (e.g., “Experience Designer is a meaningless job title.”), and we discuss it for five minutes. Something like this could also be done on giant pieces of paper.

Projected Messages: Have a computer hooked up to a projector where people can type (or Twitter) ideas and thoughts and see them projected. Providing a question or conversation prompt, as described in Open Whiteboards and Five Minute Madness, might encourage participation.

Birds of a Feather: Place a “topic card” on each of the dining tables, such as “design research” or “managing internal experience teams” and encourage people to find a table with a topic that interests them.

Thinking about conferences you’ve attended (or planned), have you seen (or thought of) any other interesting strategies for helping people get their thoughts out there?

Update: UX Evangelist David Crow explores these ideas further on his blog.

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Bryan Mason and I gave a talk last Thursday at Web 2.0 Expo ‘08 San Francisco called “10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.” As we promised attendees of that talk, we have posted the slides here. We will soon be posting a slidecast of the same talk with audio from SXSW.

For the talk, Bryan and I talked with several creative groups, including the Neo-Futurists, the writers of Avenue Q, a writing collective called The Job Factory, and Ryan Freitas about his experiences working at Aqua, a San Francisco restaurant. We also drew on our own experiences in stage management and classical music. We chose these groups primarily because they, like design teams, create as groups, are schedule-focused, and are trying to do something different with the creative process.

From the research, we looked for common problems and techniques the groups used to deal with those problems. During the presentation, we share the stories and techniques we found.

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With the “topless” (as in laptopless) meeting idea getting so much coverage, I thought I would put up the “rules” I came up with back in 2006 when I jokingly coined the term. (Note that this banning of laptops can and should spread to other attention-sucking devices. I’m looking at you, Blackberry. You too, iPhone.)

The guidelines:

• Topless meetings must be announced when the meeting is scheduled, not directly before or during so that people can plan to be topless.

• The meeting shouldn’t be more than an hour long, unless there are scheduled breaks for email/IM/etc.
• The meeting should never be more than 4 hours long in any case.
• The “topless” designation should be used mainly for brainstorms/design reviews/essential discussions.
• If you can’t be topless, you shouldn’t be in the meeting. Join when you can be topless.
• One exception made for a single note-taker/documenter of the meeting.
• Could be used for internal and client meetings

I’m as guilty as anyone of getting sucked into an email during meetings, and the divided attention (and the lowered discussion) really lowers the energy and productivity of any meeting.

And if you are one of those people who think all meetings are a waste of time, I say: nonsense. Meetings are not just about communication, though they are often treated as one-to-many information distribution sessions. Meetings are a waste of time when they are used to talk about work that’s already been done or work that is yet to be done. They are valuable so long as everyone is there to contribute and pay attention. People dread meetings because they are often not focused and drag on for longer than necessary–which is what happens when people don’t contribute or pay attention.

Meetings enhance productivity when people use them to do the kind of work that is best done in collaboration with others. Good meetings are about getting somewhere: a decision, a new idea, etc. Working through ideas often means making those ideas tangible through sketches on whiteboards, quickly showing examples, etc. That needs face-to-face time and focused discussion. It needs topless meetings.

Kudos to Jesse, Andy, and Todd for eloquently stating why meetings still matter. I ruthlessly stole and mashed up their thoughts for this post.

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In my mind, it seemed perfect: Technologists and transit-enthusiasts coming together to rethink the transit experience. A chance to bring the experience design gospel to an industry in need. Brimming with missionary zeal, my transportation planner husband and I headed off to the Bay Area TransitCamp.

I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock. My idealism was greeted by a ragtag bunch consisting of khaki-clad engineers, frumpy transit riders and suit-wearing transit officials. The engineers preached the possibilities of open-source data. White-haired transit riders screeched frustrations about their particular pet issues. And the transit officials defended cuts to bathroom-cleaning with the hard, cold facts of their bureaucratic reality.

Welcome to TransitCamp.

Could this possibly be the crowd that would transform transit? It felt like anarchy. “No complaints without solutions” was the only rule, and organizer Tara Hunt had to reiterate it again and again. Yet as idealism and realism collided, something impressive happened. We learned from one another. iPhone app developers learned that 40% of riders are below the poverty line. Cost-conscious officials learned that dozens of techies are eager to develop solutions — for free.

I realized that making a difference requires a humble and listening posture. Transit is an interdisciplinary problem that requires interdisciplinary understanding. While it produced interesting ideas, TransitCamp’s greatest triumph was fostering an atmosphere of learning and collaboration between unlikely bedfellows.

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Clients often come to us to help them develop a better sense of their users. To do so, we venture into the homes of people who are using or may be using our client’s product. Armed with audio and video recorders, we interview them at length. In the course of these interviews, we naturally develop a sense of empathy for these people: We see their homes, we meet their housemates, we make eye contact, and we share a physical space for over an hour.

After the interview, we are tasked with the challenge of articulating what we saw, heard and felt. We rummage through our interview transcripts and notes using a variety of methods and tools. We then produce personas and story-scenarios that document the characteristics, behaviors and motivations of the people we spoke to. Done right, these personas and scenarios help our clients develop a sense of empathy for their users.

But ultimately, there’s no substitute for actually being there, talking to real people, and experiencing it first-hand. To that end, we always encourage our clients to join in on our home interviews. Sometimes, all it takes is a day out of their office and into the lives of their users for a new perspective to settle in. Sometimes, it’s the real, live response to a question they’ve been holding on the tip of their tongue that finally convinces them.

So to all our clients, present and future: “Please, come with us. Take a plunge into the world of your users.”

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We’ve been using Basecamp for quite a while now. In order to make it do what we want, it sometimes takes a little encouragement and some hacks.

Things like making use of the existing CSS code to stylize your messages, or using Ajax to dynamically hide and show images to embedding Google calendars and video. Sometimes these little enhancements help you communicate your ideas more effectively.

I’ve created a free Basecamp site that has examples and the code that we’ve collected. Feel free to use and tweak as needed. If you have any others, or better ways of doing something, leave a comment here or in the Basecamp Sandbox below.

Site: Here
Log in using: guest/guest

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In this age of wireless Internet and mobile email devices, having an effective meeting or working session is becoming more and more difficult. Laptops, Blackberries, Sidekicks, iphones, and the like keep people from being fully present. Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results. Multi-tasking is a myth (and there are lots of other articles corroborating Merlin’s points). This is especially damaging in highly collaborative and interdisciplinary fields like UX. Here at the office, we’ve begun to make most of our meetings “topless” (i.e. no laptops allowed). I’ve gone a step further by trying to ban any form of networked communication from the working meetings I put together. While my colleagues here at Adaptive Path have been tolerant of my eccentricities, it’s not so easy when working with clients whose companies have a culture of being always connected and checking. So, I thought I’d share a few tips I’ve picked up for getting people to put down their Crackberries and actually do some work.

1. No rules without reasons. Don’t just ban laptops and handhelds with no explanation. Make sure to point out how important it is that the group focus on the task at hand. It’s very hard to argue with that.
2. Be the bad guy. Someone has to be the one to stand up to the social pressure. It can be an uncomfortable prospect but it is necessary. Luckily, you’ll find that many people secretly want to have the excuse to disconnect and focus. They just don’t want to take the risk of making people upset. Don’t be afraid to make people a little uncomfortable in the name of productivity.
3. Consequences. You don’t need a slap on the wrist or a time out to make this work. Social pressure is powerful. No one wants to be called out in front of a group. Make sure they know you are not afraid to do this if you see them breaking the rule. (Note: I learned this trick teaching sociology to undergrads.)
4. For short sessions: point out that there are few things that you will get via email that can’t wait until the end of an hour meeting. If you need to deal with a phone call or urgent message, get up and leave the room.
5. For long sessions: include regular 15-20 minute breaks and let people know these are there explicitly to give them time to check in on things.
6. Out of hand, out of mind. Have everyone put their phone/mobile device in a box or on a counter in the corner of the room. We all know that it is nearly impossible to ignore a vibrating device in your pocket. Just admit it and account for it.
7. State the costs. If you are a consultant, remind them that they are paying you $XXX an hour to watch them check their email. I’ve found that to be extremely effective.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had people actually thank me for being such a hard ass about these things. The above list has just a few of the tricks I’ve used to combat the insidious, addictive power of Blackberries, etc. It’s no where near complete, so please add your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

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Chiara Fox & I spent Monday and Tuesday getting our geek on at the She’s Geeky unconference in Mountain View. In addition to hanging out with smart, geeky gals and learning about a wide variety of tech+ topics, there were other things that made the experience notable, memorable and impactful.

What made it different:

• Use of the Open Space principles / Unconference structure
• Wide range of topics, diversity of skills, interests and life experiences
• Fully participatory - it was what you made of it
• All the participant were female, geeky and proud of it
• The participants created the conference contents

Highlights of the experience
The unconference format allowed for participation from anyone and everyone. If you wanted to connect with others about an idea, you were encouraged to add it to the lineup. There was a big sheet of paper where participants could post their sessions (aka: the grid.)

The grid changed and grew throughout the day. The principles of Open Space made it okay to have a big group, or just one person (yes, you can convene a group of 1!) Key to the process was the following:

• Whoever comes are the right people / is the right person.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that would have.
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• Whenever it is over it is over.
• If you are not learning something or sharing something, you have the responsibility to respectfully move to somewhere you are.

Topics were wide and varied…Art + Craft + Geek; GIMP for open source image editing; Shameless Promotion; Guerrilla Tactics of a Diversity Evangelist; Cyber Bullying; What challenging questions should we be asking ourselves? and more.

The Computer History Museum is a fantastic location. One big room for lunch and discussion tables, and smaller rooms for breakout sessions. The espresso bar kept us jazzed for the 2 days.

What made it work? Every activity was grounded in participation:

• You make your own nametag with a nametagcloud
• Snap a poloaroid and write up your own profile
• Write your name on your coffee mug (and drink custom coffee drinks all day!)
• Open lunch table sessions on the first day

What I learned?

• If you want participants to make their own experience, use a format that includes them in the design of that experience.
• Invite interested, interesting people…and interesting things will happen.
• Be inclusive…create many ways to get involved and engaged.
• Make it consistently participative.

Many of the session notes are available on the She’s Geeky site, and lots of photos are on Flickr.

I’ll definitely go next year!

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A client asked us for some advice on how to get the most out of working with Adaptive Path (or any design firm, for that matter). We polled the staff, and put our responses into an essay.

Enjoy!

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