Happily Ever After: Pain-Free Prioritization

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• Available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play

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• Published by Cateater, LLC.

Pain-Free Prioritization

Carolyn Chandler Anna van Slee@chanan @adventuringanna

Adventures in Experience DesignActivities for Beginners

Prioritization…Why is it so damn HARD?

Features generation is a journey through forests, trees, and weeds…

…and traffic pictures change.

Assumptions get made left and right.

People fall in love… and get their hearts broken

Prioritization…Why is it so damn IMPORTANT?

If it’s done badly you have a product with holes.

What primary product does Starbucks sell?

What experience does Starbucks sell?

bad prioritization leads to: frustration, loss of trust, and missed opportunities

For your product’s users…

Prioritization done well inspires love and trust

Agenda!

What are we going to accomplish today?

• Foundations for strategic design

• Intro to your case study

• Teamwork to generate feature ideas, then prioritize together

FoundationsFollow the yellow brick road

Company Values

User Insights

Role Priorities

• Clarifying values

• Forming design principles

• Research

• User models (like personas)

• Business

• User

• Technology

Teams get frustrated if they’re reacting all the time

What makes your team more strategic?

1. A thriving foundation of company values and brand attributes

Design PrinciplesBrand-rooted guiding statements that help your team make decisions about which features to build, and how they work

Antoni GaudiValue: Harmony The essential quality of a work of art is harmony. In sculptural works, harmony derives from the light that gives it relief and decorates it.

Principles on Light • The amount of light should be just right, not too much, not

too little, since having too much or too little light can both cause blindness […]

• 45 degrees is the angle that best defines bodies and shows us the form.



2. Insight into real problems, and user needs and behaviors

BEGINNER BEN

Personal Information

Age: 19 years old

College student at Uni-versity of Illinois, majoring in Civil Engineering

Lives on campus in Cham-paign during the school year and spends summers at home working

Ben uses:

About Ben

%HQ�KDV�ZDQWHG�WR�EH�DQ�HQJLQHHU�HYHU�VLQFH�KH�JRW�KLV�ÀUVW�PRGHO�SODQH�VHW�at age 12. Now he’s an outgoing, bright engineering student who gets good grades at school. He knows he currently lacks the experience to get the job KH�UHDOO\�ZDQWV�DIWHU�KH�JUDGXDWHV��DQG�KH�ZDQWV�WR�ÀQG�ZD\V�WR�JDLQ�WKDW�experience now.

Goals

Study abroad in Copenhagan for a semester

Gain the experience that will help him start working immediately after com-pleting his undergraduate degree

Frustrations

Ben is learning hard skills in his classes, but hasn’t been able to apply them to any jobs or internships directly related to his area of interest.

:ULWLQJ�D�UHVXPH�FDQ�EH�GLIÀFXOW��+H�ZDQWV�WR�KLJKOLJKW�WKH�VNLOOV�KH·V�WDNLQJ�in class, but most job sites focus on professional experience.

Activities

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By night, he works part-time and occasionally attends on-campus workshops DERXW�ÀQGLQJ�LQWHUQVKLSV�DQG�MREV�

Profile Comparisons




3. A focus on business vision/objectives, maintaining an awareness of what’s important, feasible and next




3. A focus on business vision/objectives, maintaining an awareness of what’s important, feasible and next

4. The ability to work with others to gain this knowledge and make it part of decision-making

Welcome to Happily Ever After

You’re hired! Imagine that you work at Happily Ever After, an app developer that’s focused on mobile movie-making.

We’re a small company of 50 people including developers, visual designers, user experience designers and business stakeholders.

Stop Motion

What is it?

Why do we care?

What is stop motion?

What is it?• Stop motion is an animation technique that makes

inanimate objects appear as if they are moving. • Essentially, stop motion is a series of still photos, in which

the animated object(s) are moved slightly between pictures. When all the pictures are stitched together, it creates the illusion of motion!

Why do we care?• Technology has made animation both easier and more

available to non-professionals than ever before. • There’s an amazing amount of extremely creative amateur

Your ChallengeAssess your company’s stop motion product Generate features / ideas to improve it Prioritize and prototype them

#shameless pug

This is our Methodology.

SPONGE SPARK SPLATTER SCULPT STORYTELL

Choose a design challenge and immerse in the related context. What do you want to make better? For who?

Take insights from Sponge. Define your audience and their needs. Generate the solution idea you want to design.

Brainstorm multiple ideas (quantity over quality). Explore possible features and content.

Form and refine your solution with user insights and design strategy.

Express the importance and meaning of your solution.

Whoa! Deja Vu…

Make stop-motion movies more accessible for parents with 8-to-10-year-old kids

• Making stop-motion movies can be time-consuming (parents = busy!)

• Mobile UI can be confusing • Stop-motion movie making can be

hard to understand

• How might we speed up the movie-making process?

• How might we integrate instructions or tutorials into the experience?

A mobile app for both iOS and Android

A mini stop-motion camera that you can attach to your pet’s collar that takes pics every 10 seconds

Create a retail chain of workshops with deluxe stop motion stations you can rent by the hour

Whoa! Deja Vu…

Company Values

User Insights

Role Priorities

• Clarifying values

• Forming design principles

• Research

• User models (like personas)

• Business

• User

• Technology

Values & PrinciplesWithout them, you’re the villain in the tale

The French

The British

In the 1970’s, Ann C Noble created the aroma wheel

Attributes

q Corporate

q Cutting-Edge

q Decisive

q Deliberate

q Detailed

q Dominating

q Educated

q Elitist

q Energetic

q Essential

q Ethical

q Exacting

q Exciting

q Exclusive

q Experienced

q Adaptable

q Adventurous

q Approachable

q Assertive

q Busy

q Candid

q Caring

q Commercial

q Communal

q Complex

q Concise

q Conservative

q Confident

q Confidential

q Conscientious

q Familial

q Fearless

q Fresh

q Friendly

q Fun

q Functional

q Giving

q Growing

q Heavy

q Honest

q Hopeful

q Humble

q Impactful

q Informed

q Innovative

q Inspiring

q Modern

q Nostalgic

q Open

q Organic

q Organized

q Outgoing

q Political

q Refined

q Refreshing

q Safe

q Self-aware

q Simplistic

q Spontaneous

q Stable

q Sterile

q Timeless

q Transparent

q Trusted

q Vibrant

q Warm

q Welcoming

q Youthful

ADD YOUR OWN:

Choose Your Attributes

Choose 3-5 words from our attribute list that you think describe the site you’re about to see…

Attributes for the case study are…

Empowering Inspirational Intuitive Trustworthy

Explore Definitions1. On a sticky note, individually write your

definition of the word “Empowering.”

2. Go around the table and discuss the different definitions for it. What resonates with everyone?

Empowering The act of making something is cathartic and magical. Kids don’t have a lot of power in their lives, so the act of creation gives them rare total control and an opportunity for growth.

• Let the user make as many of the key choices as possible. • Balance this with the fact that choices can’t be

overwhelming. • Make boring choices fade to the background and put fun

choices front and center.

Inspiring The product should lead families to have and express ideas that they would not have otherwise.

• Delight families with features like special effects that will push their movies and narratives to a level they didn’t realize they could achieve.

Intuitive Great design for kids is more than just easy to use – it’s fun because it’s intuitive.

• Focus flow and functionality on the actual act of making, instead of the how.

• Visuals are always better than copy – seeing is better than reading – doing is better than listening.

• Learning by doing is always best.

Trustworthy This is a safe environment for play and growth that is both desirable to the child and wholesome for the parent. .

• Parents should feel confident about their kids playing with this alone.

• This means kids won’t spend $400 in a few minutes, that they won’t share a picture of themselves in the bathtub, and that strangers will not see kids’ creations.

User InsightsNo unimportant characters in this story…

Meet Kate McCallister.Kate’s a super busy 40-year-old mother of five, and a full-time, executive-level employee at a bank.

Goals

• Wholesome experiences for her children. They love technology and are glued to their mobile devices and TV.

• Co-play experiences that are engaging…for her. Finally, her kids are old enough to play games that aren’t totally juvenile and boring for her to play.

Frustrations

• Time! As in, there’s never enough of it.

• Technology can be intimidating. Her kids are getting old enough that sometimes they know her iPhone better than she does… which scares her, when she starts to think about safety and privacy.

Meet Kevin McCallister.Kevin is a very smart, energetic and creative 8-year-old with a short attention span.

Goals

• FUN, like, as soon as possible. Kevin compares every experience to his video games. How instant is the gratification?!

• To make stuff that he can share (to impress, really) his friends and family. He doesn’t get mail or email. He can’t be on social media.

Frustrations

• Getting more of mom’s attention! With four siblings to compete with, every second he spends with his mom is precious.

• Nothing can happen fast enough for Kevin. He’s a digital native who grew up taking instant messaging and on-demand entertainment for granted.

Usability Testing

Time to get sticky with it…

Problemspink

• Places where you are confused or frustrated

• Bad/unnecessary errors

• Situations that make you ask “how do I…” too often or for too long

• Barriers to features caused by (mis)understanding

Assumptions/Emotions yellow

• Unproven statements that you’re making about the audience

• Comments such as frustrations, impressions, or other emotional exclamations

Features green

• Proposed fixes for problems

• Proposed changes to interactions/flows

• Addition of functionality

• Opportunities for a better fit with design principles

Task #1 (10 minutes)

You’ve got a 10 minutes while dinner cooks to play with your little boy. He’s got a couple toys and other objects out on the dining room table. Open the Stop Motion Studio app and create a new stop action movie:

With at least 20 frames, and using at least 2 objects

Problemspink

Assumptions/Emotions blue

Features (3-5 per person)yellow

Task 2a (5 minutes) When you are done making your stop motion movie, give your video a title.

Task 2b (5 minutes)Share your movie by emailing it to: [email protected]; Set the resolution to “Large – 540p” so that it will be small enough to email.

Problemspink

Assumptions/Emotions blue

Features (3-5 per person)yellow

Brainstorm-Up (10 minutes) to at least 20 feature ideas or changes

How might we increase delight during movie creation?

Time for a Bathroom Break! Put up your features and review other teams features (copy good ones) - We’ll start back up at 12:10

Time to do an about-face…

Evaluation criteria

• What is important to the users?

• What is important to the business?

Feasibility considerations: • App size needs to be under 50 MB

• Must remain COPPA compliant (related: we don’t want to add user accounts)

• A small lean dev team means no features should be specifically iOS or Android (must work for both) so there’s less development redundancy

The Feasibility Four

FE

AS

IBIL

ITY

IMPORTANCE

0 10

0

10

DO FIRSTDO LATER

CONSIDERDON’T BOTHER

Map Your Features!

Prioritization Personas

Meet Tess McGill.Tess is Chief Financial Officer of Happily Ever After. She’s run several profitable companies in different areas of new media.

Goals

• Monetizing the company’s products

• Making sure operating, development, and marketing costs do not exceed revenue

• She’s looking for “big bang” features that will make the company’s products stand out from the competition’s, and attract partnerships

Frustrations

• Tess finds that the team falls in love with features that are just not viable for the business. She doesn’t want to squash creative thought, but wants people to think realistically.

Meet Dade Override.Dade is a 28 year old developer specializing in mobile games and media creation.

Goals

• Become a more senior developer, both through learning new technologies and become a leader/manager in the tech group

• Create something challenging, but also easy for the team to maintain and scale.

Frustrations

• Dade is frustrated with the amount of time spent thinking and planning upfront. He wants to get in and start building as soon as possible.

Meet Jackson Pollock.Jackson is an experience designer who has specialized in working on products for kids.

Goals

• Make sure user needs are being taken into account with both features chosen and the usability of the design - including features that delight and surprise users.

• Make an interface that’s playful, and that use symbols over text to help younger children use the app more readily.

Frustrations

• Jackson feels like some business-related features have negative impact on user experience or privacy and safety.

Pick your Persona!

Impassioned Exercise: Desert Island • Focus on the features “Do First” and “Do Later” only

(take a pic before you change)

• Re-evaluate all these features through the lens of your prioritization persona

• Pick the Top 3 that you think are the most important based on your persona

• Prep a quick pitch - 30-60 seconds per pick

• Put your mark on those sticky notes as you pitch (B, T, D)

Take off your persona hat and shake it off

VisualizationSeeing is believing

Flow shapes are linear and can be linked together in a se-quence. They include dot, line, angle, arc, spiral, and loop.

Closed shapes feel more like solid objects. They in-clude oval, eye, triangle, rectangle, house, and cloud.

Using just these shapes, draw: A watch Your neighbor’s face

Now You See It….

How has being able to visualize features affected the way you perceive their value?

When doing this with your team, VOTE for your favorite feature visualizations by adding a star next to each.

Why did you pick the feature that you picked? How did sketching/visualization affect that choice?

Pay attention when it doesn’t feel right

Summary of Take-Aways

Prioritization is painful but important

Strategic foundations

• Company Values

• User Insights

• Role Awareness

Prioritization Process

• Generate feature ideas for business AND users

• Create prioritization criteria (business and user-based)

• Map features by importance and feasibility

• Filter through role concerns

• Map again by business and user benefits

• Test through collaborative visualization

Carolyn Chandler Anna van Slee@chanan @adventuringanna

And they all lived…

Adventures in Experience DesignActivities for Beginners