Aligning around design goals

Method 1: Design studio

What

A design studio is a way to facilitate communication and brainstorming between a project team and their stakeholders.

Why

This approach helps to clearly understand and value design challenges the project team may face.

How to do it

1. Invite between six and 12 participants who need to build a shared understanding. This may include:
   • Stakeholders
   • Users
   • Team members 
2. Before the meeting, share helpful information to guide the exercise:
   • Applicable research
   • User personas (unless users will be present)
   • The design prompt 
3. Bring drawing materials. 
4. At the start of the meeting, review the design prompt and research you shared.
5. Distribute drawing materials.
6. Ask participants to individually sketch concepts that address the prompt. Remind them that anyone can draw and good drawing is not the goal of the exercise. Give them 15 to 20 minutes to draw their design concepts.
7. Have participants present their ideas to one another in groups of three and ask for critiques.
8. Ask the groups to create a design that combines the best parts of the individual contributions.
9. Regroup as a whole. Have each group of three present their ideas to everyone. Discuss the ideas and encourage feedback.
10. After the meeting, note areas of consistent agreement or disagreement. Use both areas to shape design recommendations into a research plan.

Time required

3 to 4 hours

Method 2: Dot voting

What

Dot voting is a simple exercise to identify a group's priorities.

Why

This approach helps groups to reach consensus on priorities of ideas. This is especially helpful with:

• Larger groups of stakeholders
• Groups with high risk of disagreement

How to do it

1. Bring plenty of sticky notes and colored stickers to the meeting.
2. Gather everyone on the product team and anyone with a stake in the product.
3. Quickly review the project's goals and the conclusions of any prior user research.
4. Ask team members to take five minutes to write important features or user needs on sticky notes. Include only one feature per sticky note.
5. After five minutes, ask participants to put their stickies on a board. If there are many sticky notes, ask participants to put their features next to similar ones. Remove exact duplicates.
   • Give participants three to five colored stickers. Instruct them to place their stickers on features they feel are most important to meeting the project's goals and user needs. Consider a setup where people can vote privately, such as on paper if the group is recently formed or has a low level of established trust or equity.
6. Identify the features with the largest number of stickers (votes). 
7. Have the team review the priorities. Sometimes the priorities reflect the current design or process due to familiarity bias. Regardless, dot voting will surface the expectations of the participants.

Time required

15 minutes

Method 3: Lean coffee

What

A lean coffee is a format for running a meeting without a predefined agenda.

Why

A lean coffee helps give everyone equal opportunity to surface ideas and vote on agenda topics. This allows meeting attendees to feel like co-owners of the meeting agenda.

How to do it

1. Give meeting attendees two minutes to write what they would like to talk about on sticky notes, with one idea per sticky note.
2. Have meeting attendees review the topics generated. Dot vote on the topics they are most interested in.
3. Decide how much time will be spent talking about each topic.
4. Start with the topic that got the most votes.
5. At the end of the allotted time, have meeting participants vote:
   • Thumbs up: Continue talking about the topic for a shorter set amount of time.
   • Thumbs down: Move to the next topic.

Time required

Flexible