Adaptive Path Blog

Design work isn’t always glorious. Recently I had the good fortune of being tossed into the middle of a project that had been going on for quite some time. Much of the “designerly” work was finished, and the team had already switched into production mode. They handed me a stack of wireframes and asked me to expand them in some modest directions.

“Great! Can do!” I said.

And then I stared at them, paralyzed, for an hour.

“I do this all the time!” I kept thinking. “Why can’t I figure out what to do with this?”

I began to realize that the reason I didn’t know what to do with the wireframes was because I didn’t know anything about the context in which I was supposed to work. This, despite the fact that the project room was covered in sketches, concepts, Post-It notes, and all sorts of artifacts from the design process. “Why don’t these things mean anything to me?” I wondered.

Design is thinking through doing.

As designers, we think through doing. Design is a reflective practice between the designer and her design materials. When you sketch something and commit it to paper, it moves from being an abstract thought to something that is more concrete and real. Perceiving this concreteness, in turn, influences your thinking, leading to new questions that spawn new ideas. It is this reflective conversation, between a designer and the medium in which she designs, that is central to the design process.

It is the act of creating these design artifacts, rather than the artifacts themselves, that is the most valuable aspect of the design process. These artifacts are the physical manifestations of our thinking. This externalization of thought, this act of making tangible these abstract ideas, is the core of what we do as designers.

And this is why it is so difficult when we find ourselves diving into the middle of a project.

We are surrounded by artifacts of the design process that preceded us, poster boards covered in Post-It notes, sketches of potential layouts, but since we were not actively engaged in their creation, none of it means anything to us. Viewing these artifacts does not grant us the same knowledge as having created them.

If you didn’t do the doing, how do you do the thinking?

The challenge I have been faced with lately is getting rapidly up to speed on a project where most of these design activities have been conducted, and the designers are already engaged in production. They have a rich and meaningful understanding of the project which I currently lack, and yet I need to help wherever I can in producing deliverables. Having not participated in most of the design process, it is difficult to orient myself towards solutions that would be contextually appropriate for this particular project.

All is not lost, however! I have discovered a few valuable survival tips along the way that have proved indispensable in getting up to speed, and productive, when tossed into a design project mid-stream:

Ask questions. Especially dumb ones. – Not only will this help you nail the core principles of the project, the act of explaining it to you will help your fellow team members re-internalize these priorities. Plus, your fresh eyes might identify some tacit assumptions that have not yet been broken open.

When in doubt, sketch it out. – As a kinesthetic learner, I can’t simply look at a set of wireframes and know what’s going on. However, if I grab a Sharpie and spend a few seconds recreating the wireframes on paper, I will suddenly begin to understand them. The trick is to make this activity as absolutely lightweight as possible. No matter if the wireframes are in Fireworks, InDesign, Photoshop or OmniGraffle, I will still deconstruct them on paper. Through this activity I can eventually understand and internalize the other designer’s work well enough to interpret and extend their wireframes in the digital medium of choice.

Make it and talk through it. – You’ve done this before, so give yourself some credit. Don’t be afraid to draft up a proposed solution, present it to a veteran designer on the project, and talk through the reasons you did what you did. Together you may uncover some mistaken assumptions you held about your users, or some core business requirements you were missing. As a designer you already have some pretty good rationale for the decisions you make, and you simply need to adapt them to this particular project. Over time, you too will develop the same intuition that guides the other designers on your team.

Have you discovered any survival mechanisms for when you dive into the middle of a project? If so, please sound off in the comments!

All practices of design have had a history of incorporating a human-centered perspective. That’s the realization Mark Baskinger, Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Design, shared his recent article in UX Magazine. But unlike industrial design, he argues that UX doesn’t have a concreate tangible artifact, which puts it at risk as a practice:

As UX and UXD migrate toward the strategic center of design practice, UX practitioners run the risk of becoming marginalized as specialists equipped to handle only the front end of the design development process. What is currently missing in much of UX practice is the delivery of a concrete tangible artifact—a synthesized outcome.

And to me, that’s the value of designing for experiences. We’re creating solutions with a heavy consideration for the situation and context, often stretching between artifacts (web page, device screen, call center), not just the artifact itself as the start-and-the-end.

Mark — who admittedly is one of my favorite designer educators — goes on to write:

As we trek toward 2011, the articulation of design and user experience will continue to shift from design as an entity (the “it”), to designing as a behavior (the “ing”). It’s really the act of designing that matters, so we should focus on designing rather than design.

As we wrote about in Subject to Change, design as an activity is much more powerful than design as a thing.

But Mark’s warning about real artifacts is important to heed. While experiences can feel intangible, organizations can rally around tangibles. That’s why Adaptive Path is largely made up of “makers,” folks who bring experiences to life through the things we make — screens, interactions, service guides, and tools for communicating and deploying new experiences.

And for more thinking along these lines, see Service Design Deliverables, a post by Jamin Hegeman of Adaptive Path.

It’s been said that the two hardest parts of a project are the beginning and the end.  In the middle, it’s often perfectly clear what should have gone differently at the start.  But when you’re kicking off a project, you’re often so preoccupied trying to establish cordial working relationships and understand the nature of the project that some of the trivial but essential details get neglected.  That’s too bad, because it’s often the trivial essentials that build trust.

Below, I share my list of things to do at the beginning of each project. Most of these items were added to my list in a jagged, bloody scrawl mid-way through a project—which is to say that are born from the painful backlash of minutia neglected. But enough about me! I’d love to hear what you’ve learned about how to successfully start projects. Please share. (N.B.: Below, I use the term “client”  a lot. Insert “project sponsor,” “product manager,” or other head honcho title of choice.)

Planning

1. Ask the client about review cycles. Ask who will be involved in reviewing the work and how long they’ll need to digest and give feedback. Are they quick decision makers who give feedback in the same meeting? Do they need private time set aside to consider what you’ve shared, and then a follow up meeting to give their feedback? Whatever they need, quantify it (e.g., 12 hours, 1 day, 3 days) and then account for it into the project schedule.
2. Plan for a mid-point triage period. Even if you think things will go swimmingly, you’ll need it. Treat this as unstructured time for resolving lingering design questions. If possible, this should be face-to-face time when you get the the whole team together (including clients) and poke a stick at the designs (in the interest of making them better, of course!).
3. Identify dedicated roles on the client team. At a minimum, you need to know who has 1) project management responsibilities, and 2) sign off responsibilities. We have these roles on the AP side of things, but we also ask our clients to fill these roles on their side.

Pre-Kickoff

1. Agree on a file naming convention. My current favorite is [client]_[deliverable]_[OPTIONAL subpart]_[date].[ext]. Whatever you pick, make sure everyone on the team is on board with it.
2. Agree on software you’ll be using as a team. We go back and forth a lot between Omnigraffle and various Adobe CS products. That’s ok project-to-project, but within a project, that just adds overhead for unnecessary file wrangling.
3. Create a big calendar. Put it somewhere where everyone can see it, like a whiteboard or a flip chart. Put the basic project timeline on the calendar, including week number, deliverable dates, work holidays, and when people will be out of the office. Encourage everyone to add notes to it as the project goes along.
4. Setup your project management system. We use Basecamp, but of course there are lots of good systems out there. Try to remember that your client may have a strong focus on deliverables as the measure of the how the project is going, so figure out a way to make it very easy for them to find (and then refind) the latest version of the deliverables. In Basecamp, that might mean creating a message for each deliverable and then keeping a history of the deliverable in the comments of that message, with the latest version always attached in the body of the message.
5. Set up a recurring meeting with the buyer or project sponsor. Even if you don’t know what you’ll talk about, it’s good to have that face time on the calendar. It establishes a precedent and a way to get in touch with them if and when you really need it.
6. Decide on an issue management protocol. Will there always be a an issue list that lives in some discoverable place? Who has final say on whether an issue is closed, and on what schedule will issues be reviewed?
7. Identify known risks. Brainstorm activities or tools to mitigate them.
8. Create “this week” and “next week” signs. Pick a prominent spot on the wall and put up 2 signs: one that says “this week,” and one that says “next week.” As the weeks roll on, put whatever you’re supposed to be working on this week in the “this week” spot. And put whatever you’re supposed to be working on next week in the “next week” spot. When you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work left to be done, look at the “this week” sign and feel calm.

Week 1

1. Review the plan with the client. Sit down with the client or project sponsor and talk through the statement of work. (Presumably you did this with them before they agreed to start the project, but do it again anyway.) Point out maximums and minimums. Explain what each activity and deliverable is. Show examples from past projects so they have a picture in their heads of what they’ll be receiving. Call attention to points in the project that are likely to be sticky. Assure them that this is common, and you’ll guide them through it. Ask them to have patience and a sense of humor. Promise you’ll do the same.
2. Get a list of everyone who will be involved in any way. Ask the client to provide a list of all people on the project team. Ask them to indicate who should be interviewed as a stakeholder, who has veto power, who has all the information, who’s likely to disagree with the project goals, etc.
3. Gather inspiration. Begin collecting screenshots, clippings from magazines, photos snapped with your camera phone—anything that gives you even a morsel of an idea for your project. With your project on your brain, try to thoughtfully observe the world.

During

1. Communicate a lot. Use the back channel. Call people up and ask them how they think it’s going. If you have important information, try to think of everyone who will be impacted by it, and then try to share it, in whatever form is appropriate. Give senior or influential people previews before any “big reveals” to avoid unpleasant surprises during the Big Presentation.
2. Think in terms of “us,” not “them.” Remember that your most important responsibility is to help the rest of the team be successful. A rising tide lifts all boats.

By our talented summer associate, Chris A. Wronski

Firstly, let me take a moment to introduce myself. I’m a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design shooting for the first degree in the United States in a service design program. This summer I had the extraordinary opportunity to work alongside the Adaptive Path staff in San Francisco and gain priceless insights into practices and approaches that, unfortunately, are hard to find elsewhere.

One of the topics that has been on my mind for the past few months, continues to come up in conversation, and seems to consistently have opinions spread out on a spectrum, is execution. I refer to execution as the level of craft embraced in any given medium.

Why is execution-mindedness important?

It’s notable to remember that when given any type of material, be it a book, a film, or an illustration, people will compare that to the best they’ve seen elsewhere. They’ll compare your film to films created by expert filmmakers and your illustration to illustrations created by expert illustrators; the seeds of expectation have already been planted. When your executions fall far below the level of quality people enjoy, you’re giving them the opportunity to judge your presentation medium rather than what’s really important, your ideas.

Higher levels of execution can also be the key to ensuring deliverables live on. Months after your team was on-site to inspire and wow the client, the original stakeholders have gone their separate ways and changes to organizational structure mean no one really remembers what working with you was like. With quality client-facing keepsakes, it’s much more likely that your work is shared and remembered for years to come simply because people enjoy it. Remember, newcomers won’t get to see all of the wonderful solutions and insights you provided at first sight, they’ll be looking at a book cover, a document, or a presentation slide.

Finally, attention to detail within the most mundane documents (invoices, internal communications) show people who you are and how you choose to extend that to others. Don’t let them question your content or culture by giving them an ill-prepared frame to view it through.

Constant execution-mindedness has pitfalls, too

With all that in mind, overt attention to execution is not something we should practice all the time. At times, I’ve seen execution treated as a higher priority than other areas of the design process. Little time would be spent addressing the true merits of a design mindset and more would go into addressing the physicalities of a prototype. Sketching is often seen as the go-to place for coming up with ideas but far too much I’ve seen people aching over improving the line quality on a sketch that—failing to address the constraints at hand or being no where near in tune with the mission of making great things—should just have been left behind. Put shortly, prioritizing execution over a knowledge-based process is not built for creating the best ideas but instead for putting lipstick on a pretty obscene amount of pigs.

At the wrong times, high levels of execution limit our ability to provide the best solutions. We all want to improve our sketching skill, but there’s a difference between sketching to explore or communicate and sketching to present. There’s no reason to bog yourself down going overboard refining sketches during an exploration phase if you don’t think it makes sense as a step in the process.

Then there’s resources. Sure, it’d be easy to start demanding better output, but that’s not how you orchestrate change in a sustainable way. Let’s use the example of film again because it’s quickly becoming a hot-button medium for outlining large-scoping work. We haven’t made films before, and yet now we feel they’re necessary. We may not have the resources to get expert filmmakers on board, and yet we can’t let our chosen medium take away from our great work. What do we do? Keep it simple, expand on the skills that are already there.

Strike a balance

By extending your talents in other mediums to these new ones, you can not only begin a process of progressive movement towards a higher level of execution, but also create a style that identifies your unique approaches. If you’re great at cartoony sketches, bring that into the films you make. Keep things comfortable, but encourage your team to explore. When it finally comes together and you’ve handed your client a creative and beautiful take on something others substituted with stapled 8.5×11 sheets of paper filled with black and white text, you’ll know why it was worth it.

Ideally, the goal to shoot for is probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. You don’t want to start grossly excluding the gritty wonders of the design process in exchange for gloss, but you don’t want to let your work get misrepresented as something that belongs under a pile of papers either. Yes, there is extra effort involved, but will it all end up benefiting you in the end and help make everyone involved happier, more excited, and more aware of who you are? You bet.

I was introduced to Zack Rosen, CEO of Mission Bicycle a few months ago at an evening event at the Adaptive Path offices. A mutual acquaintance had suggested we talk given our interests in bicycles and user experience. I had already heard about Mission Bicycle’s innovative model of selling fixed gear bikes online and was intrigued to hear about the company’s next step: opening up a retail shop that would challenge pretty much every convention in bicycle retail. What Zack wanted to do was exactly in line with a few ideas that I had with some friends while in grad school.

As we talked the idea of a collaboration between Mission Bicycle and Adaptive Path began to take shape. Zack had plans for the shop’s interior design, but the experience of the retail environment was still missing. The goal was to design a simple retail experience that would help customers assemble their perfect, custom bike. Some of the fundamental questions that needed to be answered were:

• How do you showcase and sell a great but complex product in a constrained environment?
• How do you create a space that extends and supports other brand experiences?
• How do you sell in-store if you’ve only sold online?

It was something that I had wanted to work on for ages. The only hook? It was the middle of April and the shop was set to open in less than a month. The design would have to be ready almost immediately to be in place for the store’s opening. In less than 13 business days, Adaptive Path created display system signage that helps customers build their ideal bike. Rachel Glaves and I developed the concept together, and Rachel handled all the production work, which was no small task.

The time constraints required us to take an iterative approach to the project: The process was light and fast and required trade-offs between getting far and going deep. Fortunately, we were able to work with the entire Mission Bicycle retail team including business folks, architects, mechanics, web and graphic designers to make it happen. The process involved:

• Interviewing cyclists to understand their needs and expectations of a custom bike retail experience
• Clearly articulating the Mission Bikes process in a way that aligned with cyclists’ needs and expectations
• Sketching and generating experience concepts quickly
• Prototyping the experience design concepts in our studio

In the end we came up with a four-part system to help customers spec out their bike: instructions, wall and table mounted displays and a build kit.

The shop looks amazing. They sold 5 bikes during their first weekend. Here’s a video of Rachel walking through the experience.

Mission Bicycle Retail Experience from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

We put together a little case study with more detail about the design of the experience, including how each concept progressed from rough sketches to installation.

About the Mission Bicycle Project
Mission Bicycle was started in 2008 as a online side business of web development consultancy Chapter Three. With strong initial sales, Mission Bicycle looked to open a flagship retail space in the Mission District of San Francisco and secured a lease on 766 Valencia St. in February 2009. With three months to open the store, Mission Bicycle partnered with Grayscale to design the interior space and Adaptive Path to develop product selection and purchase experience and signage system. The store opened in May 2009 resulting in a 50%+ net increase in bicycle sales for the company.

Part of the Smart.fm iPhone App Story

While Dan is busy coding away at the iPhone App, I wanted take this time to share about our first project with smart.fm, a project to reimagine the smart.fm web experience!

What’s in a name? What we call something can have a profound impact on the way we think about it. And changing the way we think about something can have powerful implications on what we design and how we evaluate it. For smart.fm, the ah-ha moment came when we realized that it’s about Goals, not Lists.

Smart.fm is a learning community founded on a powerful technology that equips users to memorize anything — from the Capitals of the World to Japanese Vocabulary to the names of various Heart Murmurs. Today, you learn using Lists. A List is a set of content about a topic that is typically managed by a single person or a content partner. While Lists are a straightforward organizing principle, they don’t form natural hubs of activity. It’s hard to rally around a list.

Smart.fm partnered with Adaptive Path to transform the site into a “motivating, social world of learning.” Collaborating closely with smart.fm, our team (Me, Brian Cronin and Kate Rutter) sought out new ways to bring people together and engage them in collaboration and competition around learning. Through a series of exercises where we envisioned what the experience of using smart.fm could be like, the answer that emerged was Goals.

Instead of organizing content around topics, which people may study for many different reasons, content will soon be organized around Goals that people can form communities around. But before I get into the exciting implications of this shift, I wanted to share some of the experience-minded tools that led us to it:

1) We described the experience we wanted to aim for.

Using our Elevator Pitch “mad-lib” template, we brainstormed ways to fill in the blanks: “For people who… the new smart.fm is… It’s different because…” Ideas that emerged included “Smart.fm is like a pickup basketball game — it’s easy to jump right in and participate.” We refined these ideas into guiding principles that described the ideal smart.fm experience: “a friendly social world of learning” that “invites play” and “reveals and celebrates progress.”

2) We dissected the experience and brainstormed new metaphors for its parts.

From the experience mapping and metaphor brainstorming exercises that I wrote about previously, we selected some of the most compelling metaphors.

3) We imagined some possible experiences inspired by these metaphors.

We then explored how they could be applied to the major activities of the smart.fm experience — discovering, learning, celebrating, collecting, making and collaborating — and communicated the resulting ideas through “Concept Posters.” These posters enabled us to describe what an experience should feel like without getting into interface details. Aspects of the poster showing how “Smart.fm is like a scavenger hunt for knowledge” particularly stood out to the team — especially the idea of challenging users to create content through collaborative scavenger hunts.

4) We pictured the future.

We then used sketches of “The Homepage of the Future” to explore the best concepts further. Since a well-designed homepage tells the story of what you’re all about, sketching potential homepages can be a great way to boil a concept down to its essence using a value proposition, some featured content, and a presentation of core features or “how it works.”

5) It all came together in “Goal-Based Missions” — or simply, Goals

These explorations culminated in the idea of “Missions,” which we articulated through sketchy diagrams illustrating an exciting, game-like smart.fm where social activity is embedded into everything.

As the new activity hubs, Missions brought both learning material and social activity together in an elegant and cohesive way:

• Missions are about shared goals. While people may learn English for many reasons, people who want to “Spend a Week in the US,” “Impress their friends” or “Pass the TOEFL” will have much more in common with each other than everyone learning “English Vocabulary I.”
• Missions are social by nature. The shared goal is what brings people together. Instead of “signing up” or “enrolling,” you can “Join” or “Participate” in a Mission, competing or collaborating with other team members who share the same goal.
• Missions can be about creating content, not just learning it. The scavenger hunts idea from the concept posters manifested itself in the “Fact-Finding” aspect of Missions: If you want to learn enough Japanese for a week in Japan, but don’t know enough to build a list of stuff to learn — you can challenge others to create content for you.

While my high school sister loved the idea of “24-like” Missions, proposing there be “Objectives” and “Directors” and spy tools, the idea of collaborative Missions lives on under the more neutral name, “Goals.” Since the final wireframes were delivered, Smart.fm has already enabled collaborative list-building, and soon you’ll be able to do much more, including:

• Collaborate with others who share a goal (say, “Become culturally literate”) to create and collect learning material that will help you achieve it.
• Challenge other users to contribute content about a certain topic (such as “Hip Hop Artists” or “Internet Memes” — you can actually add content to these lists today!).
• Ask questions about things you want to learn (“How do you say ‘Experience Design’ in Japanese?”) and get answers from others.
• Earn badges for completing your goals and responding to challenges.
• See how you’re doing compared to others who are pursuing the same goal, others in your hometown, and perhaps even others who share your first name!

These are just a few of the exciting possibilities that reframing Lists as Goals has afforded, and we look forward to seeing both the name change and mindset change taking shape on smart.fm!

Tuesday’s event with Dan Roam was a lot of fun. He joined us at Adaptive Path to speak about his book The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. Dan is a warm, funny speaker with a wealth of stories about using pictures to solve complex problems ranging from business strategy to product design. You can see some of the photos from the event on Flickr.

I sketchnoted Dan’s talk to capture many of the ideas that he talked about. There was a lot of great info, but the phrase that stuck with me most was “The more human the picture, the more human the response.”

I think this is a wildly compelling idea. By making pictures by hand, we open up the minds of the people we are communicating with, so that they can share in these ideas. Hand-drawn images are imperfect, gestural and natural. And it’s these human qualities that make them so engaging and accessible to others.

I hear designers and strategists talk about communicating design concepts, and one theme that comes up again and again is to match the fidelity of the artifact with the nature of the feedback you are looking for. The general rule of thumb is:

• Low fidelity = High-level feedback
• High fidelity = detailed/low-level feedback

If you’ve ever presented a well-rendered, detailed illustration to communicate a rough concept and been frustrated that the feedback is more along the lines of “that’s not a good typeface” or “that data is incorrect,” then sketching may be just the tool you need.

Simple, hand-drawn pictures can’t escape their low-fi quality. Yet I think their appeal is about more than just being low-fi. People are messy and complex. Perfection may be an aspiration, but when we actually encounter things that seem “perfect” we often suspect they’re fake. Hand-crafted objects feel more authentic than manufactured ones. As human beings, we respond to natural, imperfect things with more empathy that we do to polished perfection.

Authentic, imperfect, natural, gestural. That’s a great list of design criteria. I’m all for making more human pictures that invite a more human response.

Design and innovation have become the hot topics and drivers of internal change within companies. Everyone is asking “How do I innovate?” and in return some designers have cheered “Methods!”. With methods on the forefront of everyone’s innovation list, many consultancies have begun to publish and sell their methods.

Method tools come in many shapes and sizes, here are a few to check out:

Cards:

IDEO published their set of 51 method cards in 2003 using the framework of “Learn, Look, Ask, Try”.

Nform developed a set of trading cards they have passed out during conferences that cover the areas of “Understand, Solve, Evaluate”.

Arup offers a deck of “Drivers of Change 2006” cards to explore the opportunities of “Social, Technology, Economic, Political” change.

Play and Games:

Recently at the LIFT Asia 2008 conference our very own Alexa presented “The Wonderful World of Make Believe” discussing play as a method of innovation.

Luke Hohmann wrote the book, Innovation Games in which he describes 12 games/ methods to play with your customers to better understand them.

MetaMemes developed Think Cube to facilitate collaborative innovation methods in a board game setting.

Online Resources:

The UK’s Design Council offers an online resource to a list of methods they recognize as being helpful in the design process.

The HCIDl, a part of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, offers a Design Methodolgy Wiki to the design community.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recognizes a set of common used methodologies under ISO 13407.

Methods Insights:

Hello, AP blog world- my name is Amy and I am one of the Summer Associates here at Adaptive Path. This summer I had the opportunity to spend some time thinking about methods and how they fit into the design community. Here are some insights I have concerning methods.

Method Tools can be Static

The landscape of methods has lifted a bevy of insights and issues. To begin the conversation, it has come to mind that method tools such as libraries, blogs and wikis are often static. We have yet to find a strong community around a method tool that fosters the content. It seems design firms, schools or practitioners often develop method libraries use them a few times but their vibrancy fades rather quickly. A laundry list of methods with descriptions is rarely a helpful resource for practitioners

The magic of methods surfaces when methods become a part of practice and understanding. Methods cannot live in a library but rather as essential tools within a practitioner’s toolbox.

Methods are only as good as the directions they point you in.

When faced with a project, choosing the right method is critical to the project’s success. Choosing the wrong method can mean insufficient data, or the wrong kind of data, lost time, and opportunity. Methods are a way to gain information, perspective, understanding, or context within a problem. It is important to choose the right method so that the resulting data can be actualized.

Choosing the right method can be confusing.

Often times Method tools (like method libraries) provide stages to categorize methods to help in this choice, however each tool offers a different framework. As a result, practitioners often abandon the method tool and instead consult past case studies or other practitioners to gain insight on a method’s ability.

Determining a method’s ability can involve consideration on several different axes, which can provide even further confusion. Some methods are more appropriate in the design stages, while other methods are more appropriate in collaboration with stakeholders but not during the design stages. With these considerations, the idea that methods can be categorized into specific stages seems to be false. Choosing a method requires assessing the symptoms. A problem is described by a set of symptoms and different methods can provide more insights into the problem or antidotes (depending on where in the project the method is applied, and what kind of method is used).

Methods relationship to frameworks.

With this being said, it can be seen that methods are not frameworks. The perception that methods are a means to an end is common among novice users. For this reason, some practitioners are often weary of method tools. Method tools can make methods seem like fix-alls and single stage actions. A better problem to solve may be solidifying the framework that surrounds your problem. Spending time properly scoping your design problem can lend a hand in using methods to their full capacity.

Once, I only had ONE thing to do…not the onslaught I face in a typical day, but a single, solitary thing to wrap my brain around for an entire week.

I was attending a one-week video art residency at Arts Electronic. I had a cozy place to sleep, a private workspace with equipment, and someone nearby for help when needed. Because all of my basic needs were taken care of, I was able to surmount an unfathomable number of technical tasks in a short period of time. The result was draft one of a documentary. Prior to that week, I had never opened an editing program.

This experience of intense creative productivity is the basis for my project management style today. As an artist myself, I understand firsthand the importance of developing a nurturing environment in which to create. Keeping this in mind, when I start a new project with a team, I do a few simple things to enable the same singular focus and heightened productivity that I experienced at the residency:

Keep it simple
Part of my job is to take care of the team’s basic needs, so they can focus on creating. Practitioners don’t need to be thinking about meetings, finances, client relations, or buying supplies and tools. If they are, the creative process isn’t getting that attention and the work suffers. At Adaptive Path, we also limit practitioners to one project at a time so that their focus is not split in multiple directions.

Make the physical workspace inspirational
The team needs to feel good enough in their physical workspace to spend hours there brainstorming and making. Grey cubicles and blank walls kill creativity. At our company, each team has a dedicated room for their project. I make sure those rooms are filled with the tools needed to create. The walls are then quickly covered with drawings, doodles and illustrations.

Take care of the team
The director of the Arts Electronic residency, Annie Langan, was like my guardian angel. She cared immensely about my experience and took care of my needs before I was even aware of them. My goal as a project manager is to be that guardian angel. I pay close attention to the health, mental wellbeing, and dynamic within my team. Sometimes practitioners get so deeply entrenched in their work, they need to be reminded to take care of themselves. To produce dynamic projects, their brains, bodies and spirits need to be nourished, not exhausted. When team members feel cared about, they also become more deeply invested in the success of the project.

There are, of course, many other aspects like budgeting, scheduling, and client relations that make project managers successful. But when project managers also develop an environment that encourages focused creativity within their team, they set the foundation for exceptional ideas. At the core of projects is the work itself and, most importantly, the people that create it; foster those two things and you have the recipe for a dynamic project worth talking about.

For a recent project, we analyzed strategies used by sites that thrive on user engagement to encourage people to sign up and get established. We presented our findings, including design and usage guidelines, in this visually-rich report. I’m excited to be able to share it with you, for reference and inspiration!

You can enjoy the preview below (click it for larger version) and download the full report here (FREE to Newsletter subscribers).