From developing understanding and getting everyone on the same page to bringing visions to life for businesses, facilitation can be one of the strongest tools we have in our toolbox to influence and lead.
In my first story ‘User Experience is …’ I promised that …
"over the course of a few stories, I’ll try and cover a few of the sciences we draw upon in our art as a creative community to create engaging experiences."
After looking at a range of ways we work with stakeholders, product and engineering teams. I can see how useful different facilitation methods are to develop different ways of thinking and enabling different mindsets within the teams we work with.
This takes work to do this. To get everyone in the same physical (or virtual) space, at the same time and with the right mindset to work together towards a shared outcome, that’s good facilitation!
The main players in facilitation, the right people in the same place (physical or virtual)
So it’s no surprise then that being a modern User Experience designer involves facilitation. Often if it’s not the designers in the teams facilitating these conversations and activities to develop deeper understanding, its the agile coaches, on behalf of either the Product Owner or the Designer.
There are several types of regular sessions we facilitate and each one of these will be facilitated slightly differently:
Regular work ceremonies e.g. story refinement, sprint planning, sprint review, sprint retrospective
Regular team ceremonies e.g. team meetings, lean coffee, round tables, show and tells etc.
Team forming sessions e.g. forming, storming or norming sessions to allow the team the time and space to get to know each other and work through any difficulties
One off exploration sessions e.g. workshops
One off training sessions e.g. intro’s to User Experience
Depending on what you want to get out of the session, will depend on who you invite, how long you plan the session for and how you run the session. There is lots of guidance out there, on how to facilitate in terms of preparation and setting the meeting up. But little around which exercises and activities can help with certain outcomes.
So here’s some useful formats to use while you‘re facilitating these different types of sessions based on the type of session you want to run.
Regular work ceremonies
Meetings should be a way of working through things together, when 6 heads are better than 1
Refining understanding
5 Whys to fully explore the problem and share information in the team. Ask 5 Whys
Concept mapping is a way to share the full context of a situation with a team, so that they are able to fully appreciate a problem. Map a concept
Affinity mapping mixes brainstorming to get a high quantity of ideas with sorting and clustering. To give us a sense of where most people’s thinking is focused and develop themes. Affinity map
Planning
Impact, effort matrix helps to identify areas of focus to deliver quick short term value and where more effort might need to be put in to achieve longer term value. It will also highlight where you don’t want to focus. Create an impact, effort Matrix.
Draw the problem is a way of developing clarity amongst the team, either with a concept, problem or solution. Draw the problem.
A value map is a way to build a visual matrix that quickly and clearly defines areas of interest for something. It can be a service, a product, a plan, a website. Create a value map.
Reflective and retrospection
The pre-mortum to look ahead and understand what challenges you might encounter, so that you can spend some time breaking down those challenges before you have to face them. Run a pre-Mortum, with the help of Gamestorming
The speedboat identifies possible obstacles to progress and also what is motivating the team. See how looking at a speed boat can help your team, alternatives are a sailing boat, hot air balloon, F1 car etc.
The post mortum. Reviewing how the team has worked by looking at the worst possible way the team could have worked and then seeing if any of those things happened within the team. Run a post mortum for your team using TRIZ with the help of Liberating Structures
* Use any of these techniques and more with the help of Gamestorming
Regular team ceremonies
Only get together when it’s valuable to all those invited focused around collaboration, coaching or community.
Try lean coffee, instead of regular team meetings. So that the team can talk about what matters to them and what’s on their mind. Create your lean coffee
Try using round tables to bring creative teams together around a common problem. Create an open space for your team, with the help of Liberating Structures.
Design reviews, ideally should take place early, midway and when significant features are introduced. These aren’t to critique finished work, but to facilitate collaboration and problem solving techniques. Learn more about formal design reviews and design standups from Aaron Walter at InVision.
Team forming sessions
Helping your team get together to understand each other and form as a team
The string theory game allows a new formed team to get to know each other, by matching individual’s experiences or personalities with each other to move through the forming stage. String theory game by Retromat
Marketplace of skills allows individuals to get to know each other and how they could work together in the newly forming team. Setup a Marketplace of Skills for your team or alternatively allow them to ask ‘what I need from you’ by Liberating Structures.
The tuckman game illustrates the different phases of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Use the Tuckman game next time a new team forms.
One off exploration or training sessions
The Lean UX Canvas by Jeff Gothelf is always a great way to get a team engaged in a problem and hypothesis that are starting to be formed on how to solve it. Not only is it a great way to explore the problem, understand the vision, know how to measure success, but it’s also a great activity to lead the whole team through, so they are all invested in the product they are creating. Draw up a Lean UX Canvas next time you start out on a new product, with the help of Jeff Gothelf.
An alternative to the Lean UX Canvas is either the Lean Canvas or Business Canvas, depending on your audience, their experience and language they are used to using.
Another great way to bring things to life for a team is to create a quick and easy journey map with post its on a wall. This will allow them to see what steps a user needs to take, what information they may need and what potentially challenges they may have moving from each step. Learn more about journey mapping from the Neilson Norman Group.
