Intermission: Timeout For Relocation

Hey Everyone. For those of you following and engaging with my new blog, I thank you and sincerely appreciate your support so far. Today, I made a decision to hit the pause button for a little while because I’m in the process of relocating to Nashville for a new and exciting design role!

This is only a temporary break! I have tons of exciting process development and concept exploration planned for the cooking engagement project. In addition, I also want to share new creative skills I will be experimenting with like VR sketching.

I’m looking forward to getting settled into my new home so I can get into the groove of posting on the regular.

Social Community: Feel free to keep commenting on previous posts, I’ll gladly factor your feedback into future content.

0004 - Baking Up Virtual Collaboration

This week, some trusted colleagues and I experimented with remote design collaboration by having a virtual brainstorming session using Conceptboard to see if it felt agile, flexible and generally designer friendly.  Special thanks this week to my friends and talented designers, Rola Kadi and Halle Millien for generously donating both their time and creativity.

What ideas did we serve up?

I felt that we worked well together and came up with a good number of quality ideas. Take a look for yourself by playing the video below, and see how we went from sorting trends from our user interview post-it quotes, to brainstorming on strong foundational ideas that will inform storyboards along with design sketches for both digital product wire-frames and industrial design concepts.

Design exploration for the next phase of this project will come directly from the results of our brainstorm. I really like Rola’s idea that enables users to select a family or individual’s favorite flavors, then receive suggestions that fit those choices for recipes inspired by cultures around the world. Halle layered onto this by suggesting that we streamline these dishes by changing only a couple ingredients, but stick to a familiar workflow that would take 30 mins or less. Since many interviewees complained about how much time cooking takes, this makes a lot of sense.

Other ideas informed by interview trends include looking at hands-free ways to interact with recipe instructions, such as voice commands or augmented reality. Also, essential “starter” tools that enable quick and easy prep for recipes within this new experience will serve to break down the barrier for entry, especially for people who previously haven’t cooked.

Social community:  What are some of your favorite virtual collaboration tools and methods?

0003 - Gathering Research Ingredients

Using the data or “quotes” gathered from eleven user interviews, I started an affinity map that shows the interviewees common responses; these are key trends. The idea is to visually map and discuss trends quickly with a team in a rapid, low cost way. I quickly realized a serious flaw with my approach. While a group of designers can leverage post-it notes for collaborative affinity mapping in an office, we need to find other nimble solutions when working remote.

How can we collaborate remotely on this?

I’ve been looking into virtual suites like Conceptboard, Lucidchart, Draft.io, Mural.co and Stormboard that enable me to collaborate with fellow designers as freely as possible from our homes in real-time.  Below, you can see I have started populating the quotes from user interviews in Conceptboard. Due to its freedom, simplicity and intuitive interface, it’s my favorite option for collaboration thus far. I like how it allows for easy creation and sorting of virtual post-it notes for affinity mapping. While I haven’t explored all the features yet, it is supposed to allow for little sketches right on the screen and the ability to work live with other designers where we can talk as if we were on a zoom call while actively brainstorming in the same virtual space.

For one of my upcoming posts, I plan to host and record a remote brainstorming session with two talented designers that I worked with during my time at Fossil. We haven’t tried this before, so I expect it will be both humorous and enlightening to share with all of you. Aside from that, I know we are going to come up with some really good ideas for this cooking project.

To continue filling up buckets for this project’s research pool, I will gladly explore suggestions from last week’s social post like searching Reddit forums and launching a Facebook poll. The poll will happen a little later, so I can use it to gauge interest for the ideas we generate during the virtual brainstorm.

Social community:  Let’s discuss ways to synthesize and eventually present data.  I would love to hear from my design strategist friends!

0002 - Cooking Up User Interviews

My socialized process evolution journey will begin through the lens of new projects.  The first one aims to make cooking approachable and fun for those who generally don’t cook. Since my research phase is “self-funded” and conducted from my apartment due to social distancing, I reached out to friends and family to see who would be interested in doing a user interview.

The most eager responses were from friends that are already passionate cooks.  While I greatly appreciate their support, I need to try a different approach so I can hear from people who either dislike or don’t often cook.  So, I made the following post and sketch for social media recruitment last week:

“Hi Everyone! For a new design project, I'm hoping to interview those of you who either dislike cooking and/or don't have time for it. Please comment if you are able to participate in a quick ten minute call. Thanks!”

I might be wearing out my welcome by soliciting my friends so often for user interviews. I’m guessing many of us have encountered similar challenges when trying to connect with our audience.  I would love to try other recruitment strategies for future independent or limited-budget projects.  For starters, one of my friends and mentors Rachael Volker who is engaged in both design strategy and education, suggested that I develop ice breaker strategies like an interactive diagram where a user could circle the elements of an experience they dislike.

Social Community:  Let’s talk about some other impactful methods for grassroots recruiting and user interview engagement!

0001 - Why’d You Choose Design?

It’s a simple question that many, myself included might sidestep with a childhood art class story.

For some, it’s simply honing artistic talents into a career.  Others aim to positively change the world, using visuals to tell the story how.  Some favor proven methods like user interviews, affinity maps and prototype testing to frame and justify an idea.  Another seeks empowerment to grow skills and techniques, functioning as a conduit for evolving the creative process.

While it seems I’m describing very different people, at some point in the last fifteen years these were all me.

So why do I continue?

In short, because I care about the creative potential of design culture, and aim to examine how to drive process evolution socially.  With this creative blog, I plan to transparently share each step (and misstep) of my journey.  I’ll explore and share new concepts, introspective thoughts, vulnerabilities, failures, triumphs and test out techniques while engaging with all of you.

Social Community:  Please follow, stay tuned and engage!