#Day 1 ##Establish a common understanding of the problem
With Client
####What's the problem?
- Find out what the existing problems are with this particular product/service
- Unearth existing problems with this sector/service in general
- How long have these guys been around? Where do they hope to go?
- Group the types of problems (A. Discovery, B. Informational, C. Process, D. Decision)
####Dissect the existing product/service
- Print out all the important screens in your product, lay it out, and walk through it as a user would. Critique the current system. You can also hook up a projector/tv and step through the process as a group.
####Market Research
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Examine competitors products. What are they doing well? What do they suck at? (If possible, have key competitors open in tabs open beforehand.) — Look at non-competitive products that solve a similar kind of problem in a different market. See what the users say about your competitors’ products
#####If you're also developing a Brand, start thinking about it now!
- What do you want to be?
- What do you not want to be?
- Who would be your core audience?
####Start sketching Head over to the whiteboard and sketch out the user stories. One person draws, everyone feeds in.
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Choose which ideas to explore.
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Determine what you're going to build! (Web-app, native-app, responsive site?)
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Take a photo
Without client
####Technical Research
- If possible, examine Google Analytics data. Things to look out for: where users drop off your site, conversion rates, user demographics.
####Synthesise supplied matterials
- If you were supplied documents/assets/materials earlier, now's the time to sort through them to determine what's useful. Keep these in one place
#Day 2 ##Diverge. Explore the problems, generate many solutions, and illuminate all of the possible paths. It's not brainsotrming, everyone is working quietly. Old ideas are OK. Stick to paper first, use thick markers (to prevent getting too precious). With Client
- Choose part of the problem (find natural chunks in the journey and divide the story up into segments.
- Decide which part to focus on first. Everyone should focus on the same part.
- Take notes (Everyone takes a piece of paper and jots down anything they think is useful)
- Mind map. Orangise thoughts loosely on paper. This will be a refence for later on. Get all your thoughts out.
- Crazy Eights. Two rounds.
- Individually storyboard. Sketch an UI showing how a user would move through this part of the story. Where they click / What info they enter / What they think. Refer to Mind Map and Crazy Eights. First this, then that, then that.
- Vote, round one. Stick them up on the wall and critique silently using the stickers. Voting for your own design is OK
- Discuss what you like and don't like. Possibly exlpain your ideas.
- Three-minute critiques (3 minutes per idea)
- Vote, round two. The founders get two. This is for the ideas you think are the strongest overall.
- Chose another part of the problem and repeat. Aim for 2/3/4 cycles.
#Day 3 ##Decide. Avoid the group effect / groupthink. You should know exactly what to design tomorrow, how many and who's doing it. With Client
- Whittle down solutions to a maximum of 2 routes (using weighted voting as before)
- Search for conflicts in yesterday's storyboards (two or more different approaches to solving the same problem)
- Write them all down on post-it notes, categorise and stick them up on the wall
- List out your underlying assumptions and pick which ones to test.
- Decide who will be creating the prototype(s)
- Decide on how many prototypes to create
- Collaboratively create a user story/stories (storyboard the journey). Detailed. Click-by-click. In each frame, draw a single action
#Day 4 — Prototype ##Objectives: Determine what they understand about your product, and what they don’t. Without client
- Divide up the storyboard
- Assign one person to be the 'stitcher'.
- Conduct 'Midday Lightning Critique'. The person who designed those components is going to be responsible for figuring out the solution, not the group