“Not all meetups should be
created equal!”
Bored of the same old innefective format that every other meetup was using, it was time for something new! The UX/UI last meetup of the year was a perfect forum for ‘design reflection’ – remembering the engagements, projects, application builds, creative campaigns and award nights – to focus on what mattered and identifying where the gaps are. A collaborative ‘retro’ session held at Deputy (29 November 2018). The outcome was an exploration of self, colleagues & industry – where 5 key topics were evident across the participating designers in the community.
The approach
After an initial prepatory meet, it was decided that the format of this meetup should be a ‘retrospective’. The 3 L’s (adapted from the 4 L’s) was a perfect framework for the participating attendees. More details about the event can be found here…
Team
Alexandra Keely @Naviro
Lisi Schappi @Deputy
Jason Davey @pixelfication
Categories
Design
UX/UI Meetup Group
HCD
Agile + Retrospective
“it starts with a warm-up…”
Whenever a group of people converge around a common interest, the initial feeling is one of ‘so what this thing about?’ and ‘who are these people talking?’ and of course ‘why am I even here again?’
To get people in the ‘right’ mindset to participate, they have to be immediately engaged as soon as the session kicks off. Whilst not all meetup attendees are keen for ‘getting up off their backsides’ (particularly at 6:30pm after a long day of work), impressing upon a ‘volunteer’ mindset usually gets a few curious and already engaged bodies on their feet ready to go!
Human Centred Design?
Let’s face it – the purpose of this session was to gather feedback from designers…so the interactions were people-centric.
Mindset…
In a 15 minute activity, volunteer participants were asked to form 2 x teams (at random) – ‘forced collaboration’ – in order to solve a physical problem.
Blood flowing – mind + body
“2 minutes”
Good solutions are often born from tight design constraints. Time get things moving!
There’s only one winner
So competition also drives an outcome…especially when there’s the promise of a ‘reward’ (yes, there was Deputy t-shirts on offer). The stage was set that there was more activities to come later in the session.
storytelling to set context
Before the group of meetup attendees got down and dirty, some background was needed.
Rescue…
One beautiful summer day in the ocean off Panama City Beach, two boys out for a swim got caught in a rip current. When their mother heard their cries, she and several other family members dove into the ocean, only to be trapped in the current, too. Then, in a powerful display of character, complete strangers on the beach took action. Forming a human chain of 70 to 80 bodies, they stretched out into the ocean and rescued everyone.
‘How can we become better humans‘ – Christian B Miller – 23rd May 2018
Event circumstance
A Black Friday shopper who collapsed while shopping at a Target store in West Virginia went almost unnoticed as customers continued to hunt for bargain deals. Walter Vance, a 61-year-old pharmacist who reportedly suffered from a prior heart condition, later died in hospital, reports MSNBC. Witnesses say some shoppers ignored and even walked over the man’s body as they continued to shop, reports the New York Daily News. Friends and co-workers saddened to learn of his death, expressed outrage over the way he was treated by shoppers.
‘How can we become better humans‘ – Christian B Miller – 23rd May 2018
Why do strangers help in one situation and simply ignore someone in need in another?
The character gap…
There’s a gap between our moral values and actions, but we can reduce it by increasing our propensity for moral action.
We like to think of ourselves, our friends, and our families as decent people. We may not be saints, but we are still honest, relatively kind, and mostly trustworthy. Miller argues here that we are badly mistaken in thinking this. Hundreds of recent studies in psychology tell a different story: that we all have serious character flaws that prevent us from being as good as we think we are – and that we do not even recognize that these flaws exist. But neither are most of us cruel or dishonest. Instead, Miller argues, we are a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of us in a group of bystanders will do nothing as someone cries out for help in an emergency. Yet it is also true that there will be many times when we will selflessly come to the aid of a complete stranger – and resist the urge to lie, cheat, or steal even if we could get away with it. Much depends on cues in our social environment. Miller uses this recent psychological literature to explain what the notion of “character” really means today, and how we can use this new understanding to develop a character better in sync with the kind of people we want to be.
‘How can we become better humans‘ – Christian B Miller – 23rd May 2018
let’s get retro!
The 3Ls is a great data gathering activity which enables people to focus on 3 distinct areas for personal reflection. Thanks to Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener for the original 4Ls activity…
What did you like?
Participants were asked to write down as many items that came to mind about ‘what they liked’ about their design practice this year (2018). All notes were placed in the first wall poster. The key topics synthesised (by the talented Deputy design team members) were:
Growth - professionally & personally
Working collaboratively
Research - listening to users more
What did you learn?
The second bit was for participants to note down the key learnings for the year. All notes were placed in the second wall poster. The key topics synthesised (again by the talented Deputy design team members) were:
Personal growth
Design process
Technical skills
Voice of the customer
What were you lacking?
The last section involved participants noting the things they felt they were missing in their design practice. All notes were placed in the third wall poster. The key topics synthesised (Deputy designers were everywhere!) were:
Mentorship & guidance
Lack of vision or roadmap
Ability to deliver value
the objective of the ‘retro’ session was to enable designers to consider & reflect on their design practice (whatever field or speciality) and indentify what they are missing in order to ‘do better in 2019’.
The dots have it!
The easist way to prioritise people’s thoughts, is to get them to VOTE on the most important ‘theme’ that was surfaced in the topic consolidation process (facilitated by the Deputy designers).
This approach is an ‘indicative’ – it captures participant’s ‘rank’ importance at a ‘point-in-time’. Any insights derived from the data generated are purely observational.
the results are conclusive!
Any data collated in this distillation process is useful. This approach provides a quantitative source (number = n) that has been generated & indentified against a qualitative trigger (i.e. opinion, emotion or belief).
The 3 key areas designers indicated they lacked resources or support in this past year, are indicated in the bar charts as follows:
- Mentorship & guidance – 44%
- Vision & roadmap – 22%
- ability to deliver value – 11%
topic areas
Sticky dots
+ Participants
Key takeaways
It was clear that even before the panel discussion part of the meetup session began, that designers were crying out for support in the form of mentorship and career-related guidance.
The final session of the meetup was a crowd-sourced panel from the design participants.
This was the STORYTELLING part of the session where the panel fielded questions from the rest of the crowd. Support and commentary was provided by Lisi and JD.
The majority of the discussion centred around people wanting to know how personally each of the designers on the panel have handled positioning themselves as ‘crafts-people’ and how they’ve supported others or found support from others.
Each of the participants were asked to note one thing they were going to focus on to improve their design practice within 2019.
Now with almost half the year passed, it’s time to find out how they AND you have helped make your design year better. Once we’ve collected a number of responses, the outcomes will be posted in a follow-up story…and of course follow the discussion here on Twitter.