Design Studio Process

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Design Studio Process

Since last year, I started to lead more projects as the lead UX architect of the company I currently work for. I usually work with one or two UX or visual designers. Sometimes, we inevitably run into the problem of “too many cooks”, especially for projects not too big in scope. How to make the most of the collective creative energy without getting into the battle of endless debate on minor design decisions and end up killing each other(I’m joking). I adopted this design studio process.

Below are the process of the design studio:

Review objectives and focus

Objective needs to be specific
Need to focus on certain design elements. Could be high level structure such as navigation; could also be specific elements such as search

Sketch

Goal: Each person generate a wide set of ideas in a short amount of time

Round 1:
8 ideas in 5 minutes
Round 2:
1 big idea in 5 minutes
Can build on a previous idea or combine elements of several ideas from the previous round
Round 3:
Storyboard/Wireflow in 5 minutes
Building on the big idea from round 2, sketch a storyboard of all the key steps related to the idea

Present and critique

Each person have three minutes to present and five minutes to receive critique
Presenter can not defend themselves while others giving critique
Critique should revolve around whether the design satisfy established design criteria and known user needs
Critique should address both strengths and weaknesses of each design
Each person vote for their top three ideas

Converge

Identify the the strongest elements of various ideas and combine them into a new idea

5: Prioritize

Create consensus about common themes and the elements most valuable to the objective of the design project