Workshops
creative facilitation
A big part of my role at Bionic is facilitating workshops with cross functional teams at different moments during the design process. Below I summarize 3 workshops I run with a flowchart as well as a case study. They are:
Arrows indicate that these workshops are used recursively and in whatever order as necessary.
SYNTHESIS
The synthesis session is a moment to review qualitative research and distill it into key consumers tensions (or insights) which are reframed as design opportunities. So, goal of the session: transform raw qualitative data into design opportunities. It looks something like this:
During synthesis sessions I find myself consistently coaching teams on the following three ideas (1) Extreme user segments are not the beachhead. Because extreme users "live at the fringe" they are best able to articulate needs and problems within a specific domain area and useful for discovering needs that many consumers experience. Teams often make the mistake of equating extreme users with beachhead consumers. (2) An insight is not a rephrase of what the consumer said. Instead an insight reads between the lines and makes a leap of faith assumption. If it's obvious and everyone in the room agrees, it's probably not an insight. (3) HMW statements are not design solutions. Writing a good How might we? (HMW) statement provides the requisite boundaries for a healthy brainstorm without the suggestion of a solution. I find myself cautioning teams against getting into "solution land" just yet.
case study
A liquor client asked our team to explore new opportunities within the domain of social drinking. To immerse ourselves in the world of social drinking, we conducted 90 minute, in-context interviews with professional socials - consumers whose jobs require them to attend events with alcohol more than 3 times a week - and health conscious social drinkers - consumers who workout at least 3 times a week and adhere to some type of diet. We believed that the unique contexts of these consumers’ lives would help us uncover problems that mass market consumers also have while social drinking. Using the process outlined above we interpreted selected consumer quotes into consumer tensions, to consumer needs, to HMW statements to fuel a future Generate session.
Because These interviews were conducted in bars with with alcohol present, I witnessed some say vs. do behavior. For example the interviews might claim to consume no more than 2-3 beverages in an evening but consume more than 3 drinks over the course of a 2 hour interview. Given more time, I would have recommended on-the-fly ethnography studies to observe more “do” behavior.
Our consumers taught us about the meaning of alcohol beyond just a beverage, as an implicit signal of vulnerability and a symbol of belonging. It made us privy to the unwritten norms we use to navigate social situations and the tension between wanting to remain in control and wanting to proverbially, “let our hair down.” Consumers recognize alcohol’s merits as an elixir that can build and foster community by breaking walls down but often at the expense of our own well being. In short, our relationship with alcohol is fraught.
GENERATE
A generate is an ideation session that creates moments of solo ideation as well as group brain wiring techniques to generate inchoate solution concepts from HMW statements. Goal of this session: to transform HMW statements into beginnings of solution concepts that can be shared with consumers to solicit feedback.
I see teams get hung up on the level of fidelity of their ideas during a brainstorm. While some people are able to imagine more complete concepts, others get stuck at the attribute level. To avoid this I encourage my teams to close their eyes and try to visualize what they want to write down. If they can visualize it, it’s worth writing down, otherwise the idea needs more work and I provide a framework for fleshing out the concept further.
Case Study
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has highlighted inequities and failures within our food delivery system, a CPG partner in the food sector asked our team to conduct a “COVID-19 sprint” to develop emergency solutions to mitigate food insecurity for vulnerable populations. The team spoke with stakeholders along the supply chain including food suppliers, distributers, government subsidy providers, school food administrators and food insecure consumers (both new and existing). Two of our three solution concepts create mobile access points to fresh food within food deserts while the third concept leverages the reliance of low income consumers their communities to create purchasing pods, allowing them to exercise group purchasing power.
TRIBES
The goal of a tribe workshop is to develop a rich psychographic-based understanding of the beachhead consumer drawing from all the research that has been done to date. I provide a set of scenarios or probes designed to help teams brainstorm different facets of a tribe (e.g. If you were to approach this person, what would you talk about? What is this person going to do next and where are they going?) Defining the beachhead consumer’s tribe is important to find them both IRL and in digital space during solution validation.
Case Study
A CPG client and major player in the coffee space, asked us to explore opportunities within self-care. Before the tribe workshop we had done 50+ interviews with new moms, physical laborers and holistic medicine practitioners to define self care and identify consumer needs within this domain. Up until this point we had identified, developed and tested two disparate concepts with regular coffee consumers and conducted card-sorting exercises with the same group in an effort to pin down their psychographics. This qualitative concept validation served as the inputs for a 3 hour internal tribe workshop.
After a collect and cluster, 2 tribes emerged from this exercise: mindful yogis - consumers who are hyper aware of the mind body balance - and sensitive souls - immunocompromised consumers who have taken control of their health.
