sean howard's consulting blog

Exercise: Users, Objects and Goals

2008-09-08T20:52:09-05:00

Overview of Users, Objects and Goals Exercise:
Most organizations are able to provide some level of detail on the organizational goals, but rarely are the value for and needs of the target audience well defined. This exercise gives me insight into the different requirements of internal and external stakeholders/users and actually creates a checklist at a very detailed level for a feature review/requirements assessment. All from the point of view of the end audience.

What It Doesn't Do:

This won't replace audience insight or deeper investigations into the needs of the user. It relies very heavily on the current understanding of the end audience existing within the organization. So insight will be dependent on what is already known or understood. I would not overlook the value of this exercise, however, as It is a great starting point for organizations not used to generating insight or understanding from the point-of-view of their audiences.

When To Use:
I've found this a very effective method of kicking off any digital project where there has not been much focus on the user defined goals or requirements. I use it to start bringing the focus back to the users and to begin creating a lexicon or foundation for user goals/needs/insights. It's also a great back-pocket exercise as it can be done with nothing more than a whiteboard and a camera of some sort (cellphone).

Required Inputs:
The requirements for this exercise are quite light:

Wall or Whiteboard
Team of people working to build/launch something
Minimum of an hour

Recommended:

2-4 hours
Stickies or Cards
Markers for everyone
Tape or tacks
Camera or Camera phone for capturing artifacts

Structure:
The process I use is dependent on how much time is available to me. So I will present a stab at a 1 hour version and then potential 3 hour variations. I'm assuming you have a whiteboard, a blank wall, and stickies and pens for all present.

If you have 1 Hour:

Distribute Stickies and Pens
Present the "Rule"
- "When something strikes you, Say it; Write it; and Place it (on the wall)".
- If stickies come up too detailed, then I question them and potentially get them re-written
- If stickies come up too vague, then I question them to understand what is meant
Define the "audience/users"
- I just ask simple questions, such as "Who will be affected? Who are we searching for?"
- I question each audience as it is presented to ensure I understand and also to open up the dialogue at the table on just who the audience is
  - Areas to explore: Who is supported? Who is not? Who is of primary importance? Who would we NOT expect to ever visit/reach?
Define the "user goals"
- Re-iterate rule. "When something comes to you, Say it; Write it; Place it (on the wall)".
- It can also help to provide guidance on how to write user goals
  - "Assistance" is too brief.
  - "Get help with what to click next before continuing" is too detailed.
  - It should be clear, complete and easy to read from a distance on a rectangular sticky. ie: "Learn more about product" or "Download the demo"
- Some questions always help get things started and to keep things moving. But go with your gut here and keep asking and generate as many answers as time allows.
  - Take one of the key audiences and ask what some of their goals are on the very first time they visit. "They've never been here before. What are the looking to accomplish? What questions do they have?"
  - What about on a repeat visit?
  - What about people that join/purchase/buy? What are their goals or questions on a return visit? ("Why are they coming back?" is a good prod here.)
- NOTE: As a facilitator, the first request is often the most challenging. Hold your ground and don't falter. Ask the question and wait. I've waited as long as 2 minutes. This doesn't sound like much but it can seem like eternity on the day.
- IMPORTANT: Invariably, someone will raise a user goal that will be met with derision or vetoed by someone else on the team. Record this goal as you would any other and explain that while it may not be something we want to support, it is a goal a user will have. So we should ensure we address it - perhaps through education or explaining to users why it can't be supported at this time.
Sort and Label
- This is rarely a part of the one hour exercise. There generally isn't time. I've done some speed sorting as a starting point for my work after the session. To do this, ask two volunteers to come up and short them into columns with the groups help. You can take a stab at labeling and re-organizing later.
Explore the Objects
- This is not a part of the one hour exercise. In the short version, I generally take a first stab at this after the fact and make it part of the next workshop/review process.

If You Have 3 Hours:

Same Process as 1 hour with the following exceptions
Present the "Rule"
- Same as 1 hour
Define the "Audience"
- Same as 1 hour (define the potential audiences)
- Now build personas (emergent)
  - Break the team into groups of 3-4 and have each team blow out a different persona.
  - I tend to use Dave Gray from Xplane's model of giving each persona a name, capturing basic information about them and then what they are Seeing, Hearing, Thinking, Feeling and Doing. I love doing it via a sketch as it really helps people get into the persona's shoes without realizing it.
  - Have each team present back to the entire group.
Define the "User Goals"
- Same as 1 hour
- Dig deeper and ask more questions
  - First visit versus repeat visits
  - Walk through each persona and audience. What is different for them? Where do they not fit?
  - What about users that never "join", "sign-up" or "purchase": why do they keep coming back?
- Keep pushing until you have filled the wall. Once you have run out of steam, I recommend taking a brief break before continuing.
- Standard Sort & Label
  - Ask the group to begin to sort the labels into columns
    - If this is done quickly and in an orderly fashion, then as facilitator I recommend playing a strong "Devil's Advocate" role and start questioning the sorting, whether items belong
    - Once it descends into discussion and debate, then the process is working and just answer questions.
  - Label
Explore the Objects (if time)
- Review the category lables for the user goals
- What major "things" have to be built to support users in each area?
- I generally start by capturing "Home Page" if it's a website and then pull another example out to get things started
  - For example, if "Become a member" was identified as a goal, then a "login mechanism" would be a potential object needed. It might also require a "profile page", etc.

Lo-Fi it Up:
This is a great exercise to pull out of ones back pocket on any engagement with no forewarning. I've done it with no briefing and nothing more than a whiteboard and my phone camera. Start with defining the people who we are interacting with and then launch into goals. As you finish each part: snap a photo, erase and continue.

Tools & Templates:
There are a number of artifacts created directly from the workshop in the form of photos, flip charts, etc. Here I present the artifacts I would generally go away and create after the session. I am providing them in PDF for quick review as well as in usable template form. I hope that they prove useful as starting points for how you might implement or use this tool.

Templates:

usergoals_bypage_workshop.key.zip (Mac keynote, ZIP compressed, 340K)
usergoals_bypage_workshop.pdf (PDF, 376K)

I've found the template above helpful in that they become checklists for any creative ideas or prototypes that emerge. They allow me to capture what is directly supported in each area and what is indirectly supported elsewhere (with clues/guidance to the user on where/how to accomplish each goal not directly supported.)

[UPDATE: Links fixed]

License:

All parts of this post/toolset are released with a creative commons license. This means you are free to use and modify the items presented, but you must offer what you create back to the community under the same license.

I look forward to any comments or feedback.

Users, Goals and Objects Workshop by Sean Howard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at www.seanhoward.ca.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.seanhoward.ca/seanhoward/contact-sean.html.

The Role of Serious Play

2008-06-29T12:24:59-05:00

What is the role of serious play in the boardroom?

I remember my first real experimentation with play to solve a serious business problem and it occurred way back in 2001. I was a Senior Strategist with ICE and we were working on the second largest e-commerce initiative in Canada for a packaged travel company (packaged vacations). We had recently wrapped up a 2 months planning phase that culminated in a dangerously heavy set of bound documentation.

I was approached to attend a meeting with all the top brass on the client side as the Information Architect on the account was concerned that even after all this work there was no clear consensus nor understanding on all the components involved. This lack of clarity appeared to exist on both sides of the fence. There were so many third party systems, each packaged and altered by additional third parties and no-one could come to a consensus on how to build the solution let alone begin narrowing down features for the 1.0 release.

There was less than an hour before this meeting and I found myself sitting in my office unsure of how to bring clarity where a 2 month process seemed to have failed. Should I dig out some of the documentation and work through it? I kept coming back to what was needed. We lacked a contextual understanding of how all the pieces interacted. What we needed was a method for both teams to both understand and communicate so as to be able to make tough decisions on where to focus. What features would be on the table? What experience would/should be deployed? At what cost internally and externally?

We had to simplify things. It was then that I acted, trusting only my instinct. I grabbed the packs of crayons I kept in my desk drawer and headed out to the meeting. When the Account Director saw me carrying a stack of blank paper and all my crayons, I believe he panicked. He went on for quite some time before finally handing the floor over to me.

I remember so very clearly standing in front of this room of fully suited executives and puzzled looking agency types. I placed the paper on the table and dumped the crayons into a giant pile as I began to set the context and outline the instructions for the exercise. I will never forget the silence that settled over the room.

It was my good friend and client lead Stu who saved the day. He stood up, the whole room watching him and no one moving. He proceeded to take off his jacket, hang it over a chair, and move in to "get the best crayons before someone else did."

Within minutes I had a roomful of people hunkered over pieces of paper, scribbling away with their crayons. Within 30 minutes we had over a dozen drawings up on the wall and everyone was moving around listening as each "artist" explained their drawing. It was critical that we had pictures from both the client and our agency staff. And it was Stu's drawing that brought the house down.

It showed a stick figure in front of a computer (or so we were informed by the artist whose greatest skill was not drawing). From here, all of the systems were clearly identified with where they interacted in the ticket purchase process, front of house and back of house. It caused our technical leads on the project (agency side and client side) to finally nod in agreement. But this was not the major breakthrough for this project.

There was a strange item with a large wheel and a giant tube coming off of it. And from this was a line leading to a stick figure horizontal above the ground. The line continued in a giant arc to what some might say was a plane. "This is a giant cannon. And this is a customer being fired from the cannon to the plane where he will take his trip." We all had a very good laugh. But this crayon drawing captured the one thing that had never been talked about - that no one knew what happened between when the money was taken, the ticket issued and the vacation began.

And this is where the real opportunity existed for the client to create a Wow experience. To close the loop pre-flight and post-return. This was the real breakthrough for the project.

When I run exercises like this today I start earlier in the process for the customer (when they start thinking about a vacation perhaps?). I also have words to describe the user experience and process lifecycle. But what has remain unchanged is how using simple tools and play can break down problems that prior to the session seemed unapproachable, unknowable or even unsolvable.

Image Source: D'Arcy Norman, Techie Kev

Launch: What is this place?

2008-06-15T19:05:57-05:00

I believe that enabling human potential and creating a sustainable planet are two of the most important and difficult tasks facing humanity. In fact, they are what we call wicked problems - problems that are nigh unsolvable.

My path up to this point has been devoted to supporting corporations with digital innovation, the social use of technology and crossing the gap from insight to innovation through facilitated play, collaborative design and participatory research. I've been tasked to build better websites, online empires, brand strategies, identities, marketing campaigns and more. Always with the eye to impact beliefs or behaviors.

I have come to re-frame many of my skills, interests and learnings into a framework that is becoming known in the Industry as "Serious Play". Serious Play encapsulates design thinking, co-creation and social knowledge creation. It is about enabling more effective forms of problem solving and when combined with participatory design and research, I believe it can enable new insight and more effective forms of community and audience engagement.

Now I want to use these tools "for good," so to speak.

So welcome to my consulting home on the web. My new practice is devoted to supporting the organizations and individuals that are impacting and solving the wicked problems facing our world. "But what services do you offer?", you ask. More to come on that. For now, I hope to assist with the creation of better digital experiences and the development of more effective engagement strategies that look from the outside of the organization inward. The very way our audience and supporters see us.

Let's see if it's possible to follow our hearts and make a living, eh?