Design Thinking, how to make better apps quickly in a post covid world by François Légaré

by François Légaré, Bell
We will review multiple tools used to create products that are aligned with customer needs. From ideation tools to root cause problem analysis, this talk will help you and your team build a backlog that is fully aligned and prioritized in a quick iterative format (+/- 5 days from problems analysis to conception).

Bio

Holder of an engineering degree in information technology and a DEC in computer science, and more recently a MBA François Légaré work in the IT field since 1998. He was a programmer analyst and system architect, team lead in J2EE, web/mobile developers and trainer and now act act as a senior solutions engineer combining AI, AR/VR and various cloud and IoT solutions to increase benefits for entreprise clients. He also teach and give conferences on various IT related topics. He is also involved in the IT community of Montreal participating and organizing various IT related events.

His main strengths are innovation, creativity, communication, excellent comprehension of strategic business issues, the ability to lead complex projects and delivery team.

https://gdgmontreal.com/2020/05/16/may-meetup-online/

Transcript

1. DESIGN
   THINKING
   François Légaré MBA, P.Eng
   Bell Canada
   

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2. Before we start
   Link to this presentation : bit.ly/2TIuQzQ
   Link to collaboration templates : bit.ly/2M3PsOR
   Feel free to leave comments on the presentation and tools, let’s make this
   a community toolbox :)
   2
   

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3. “ Design Thinking is a
   process to help find
   solutions to complex
   problems, based on user
   data/observations
   3
   What is Design Thinking?
   

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4. Advantage of DT
   - User centered design
   - Foster creativity
   - Collective knowledge
   - Less meetings and less delay
   - Flexible and agile, work best in ambiguity
   And well…
   Work all together in a war room towards a common
   goal… but...
   4
   

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5. COVID-19 entered the room
   5
   

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6. 6
   Empathize Ideate
   Prototype
   Test
   ● Gather data
   ● Go on the field
   ● Interviews
   ● How could we?
   ● Meet experts
   ● Goals per personas
   ● Pains/Gains
   ● Story map
   ● Ideas / solutions
   ● Lightning demo
   ● Dot votes
   ● Storyboard
   ● Low-fi mockups
   ● Share ideas
   ● Refine
   The DT Flow
   Define
   ● Retros
   ● What worked
   ● Iterate quickly
   ● Redo the cycle
   ● Fail fast
   

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7. TIME &
   SPACE
   Dedicated is the keyword!
   7
   

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8. 8
   Source: Jake Knapp, Sprint, how solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days
   

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9. The time
   9
   

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10. Room reserved 5 days
    The space will have walls
    covered with delivery
    artefacts they must stay
    there during the whole
    sprint workshop.
    The room (pre-covid)
    White board, lot’s of them
    You will need a room where
    all walls can be used to put
    content on it. Nothing
    should be erased or
    modified outside the core
    team.
    10
    

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11. Virtual doc space
    - Google Drive
    - Confluence
    - ...
    Make sure everyone is
    comfortable with the
    directory space.
    Everyone should be able to
    find quickly what they
    need.
    The virtual room
    Virtual whiteboards
    - Google drive friendly:
    - Google Docs
    - Google slide
    - Google Draw
    - Draw.io
    Other alternatives :
    - Miro.com
    - (please share in chat)
    11
    

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12. Challenges of virtual room
    Real time post-it interaction ▸ Train real time whiteboard tools
    ▸ Do some practice run on icebreaker activity
    ▸ Make sure animator do a round table to allow
    everyone to speak, can be hard with the
    mono-thread and lack of visual queue
    12
    Challenge Mitigation
    

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13. THE
    TEAM
    Core team and extended team
    13
    

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14. 14
    Core team
    ▸ Ideally 5-7 persons
    ▸ Ideally 100% dedicated
    ▸ Mix of experts
    ▸ Diversity is key
    ▸ “Trouble maker” welcome
    The Decider
    (final authority)
    Finance/PM
    Marketing
    SME /Users expert(s) Technical expert(s)
    Design expert
    Facilitator
    

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15. Extended team
    ▸ At least 5 end users per category
    ▸ Other SMEs (legal, compliance, etc.)
    ▸ Other experts that could share insights
    15
    

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16. Design Thinking work best with complex / broad ideas:
    ▸ What if we can remove pain of doing X
    ▸ What if disrupt market Y
    ▸ What if we would make solution for Z
    Can be a small portion of an existing project or a net new concept!
    16
    Pick a project / idea / Issue
    

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17. We need to set our main goal, this will be the
    beacon to help make decisions and prioritize.
    - Why are we doing this project ?
    - Where do we want to be in 6 months?
    - Where do we want to be in 1 year ?
    Discuss as a team, then write the main goals that
    would need to be achieved by the solution.
    Now start with the end
    17
    Goal: Bring them back alive to earth...
    

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18. empathy[ em-puh-thee ]
    the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings,
    thoughts, or attitudes of another.
    18
    

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19. Empathise
    Goal: Understand the users and gather
    data
    1
    

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20. ▸ Meet the users, ideally where they work!
    ▸ Split the team in small groups (2-3 persons)
    ▸ Try find all answers found in Empathy Map Canvas
    ▸ Take individual notes of what you observe
    Get out of the building
    20
    (Our more specifically, from your desk)
    

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21. ▸ Organize video conferences
    ▸ Ask to screenshare operations they do
    ▸ Goal is to help virtually see as much possible
    ▸ from the eye of the end user.
    Virtually get out
    21
    (Our more specifically, from your desk)
    

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22. ▸ For public users or market analysis:
    ▹ User research (ie. mkc.int.bell.ca)
    ▹ CEFRIO (cefrio.qc.ca)
    ▹ Stats can (statcan.gc.ca)
    ▹ Google trends (trends.google.com)
    ▸ Prepare Lightning Demos of findings to share
    findings.
    Gather users data
    22
    

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23. Event Storming
    Allow team to define event, cause and effect of systems to define a pub/sub architecture.
    Details about event storming info
    23
    

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24. ▸ When users mention pains points try identify root
    cause of the issues. Avoid fixing superficial issues.
    Here are some tools to find root causes:
    ▹ 5 WHYS - BRAINSTORM
    ▹ 5 WHYS - INTRO
    ▹ ISHIKAWA
    Root cause
    24
    

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25. Experience map
    - Back to the war room create an
    EXPERIENCE MAP using these
    post-it, it will be converted at later
    stage to a STORY MAP to be
    converted as a agile backlog.
    - Yellow stickers : Observations
    - Green stickers: Theme to help
    regroup observations
    - Blue stickers : Step of a process
    25
    

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26. Prepare next step
    - At this point a good overview of the experience
    - As a team pick an area you want to refine using the DT process
    - Do this with dot voting on the EXPERIENCE MAP
    26
    

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27. Define
    You can’t go wrong with user centered
    design
    2
    

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28. Layout the pain
    As team identify biggest pain points
    1. They must vote on observation they think is the biggest issue
    2. Write down pain points then convert them in to gains
    3. If goals are not easy to find, use the approach : HMW
    4. For each goals think of potential metrics to track success:
    a. Efficiency: Time spent on the task
    b. Effectiveness: Reduction in errors
    c. Satisfaction: Customer happiness with the solution
    5. Put these finding in the PAIN/GOALS/METRIC board
    28
    

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29. Empathy Canevas
    ▸ Create 3 consensus personas based on all the previous
    activities.
    ▹ Each member can produce a persona with a name and
    attributes
    ▹ Team present their personas (lightning demo or dot vote)
    ▹ Team pick attributes they want to see in target users
    ▹ From now on, you know need to design for these personas!
    29
    

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30. Ideate
    Paper screens FTW!
    3
    

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31. Generate multiple ideas
    ▸ Using paper, pens, sticky notes,
    cisors we will build interfaces of the
    solution.
    ▸ The goal is to create prototype that
    will be used to validate usage by the
    end users.
    31
    

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32. Ideation (step 1)
    32
    ▸ Everyone individually create sketch of the ideas they got inspired with the
    previous data observations.
    ▸ No bad ideas, no technical constraints, go creative!
    

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33. Ideation (step 2)
    33
    ▸ Everyone present their concepts, a other
    approach use dot voting heatmap
    ▸ Second round:
    ▹ Based on what was shown, individually or in
    small group sketch new round of ideas.
    ▹ Wall of ideas will be produced with all
    interface created.
    

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34. Ideation (step 3)
    ▸ Based on story map, create a storyboard covering each steps of
    the process.
    ▸ Make sure if a features was kept on storymap it is indeed in your
    interfaces.
    ▸ Think about alternative scenarios:
    ▹ Do happy path
    ▹ Unhappy path
    ▸ No need to be technical, we just focus on flow per personas.
    34
    

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35. Test
    Confirm your creation!
    4
    

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36. Test
    ▸ Test interface with paper prototype to
    validate ideas and gather feedback from
    users.
    ▸ The prototype should be including
    features required to cover main needs.
    ▸ Try be precise in the options but keep it
    low-fi
    36
    

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37. Test Post Covid
    ▸ Test interface with software prototype
    to validate ideas and gather feedback
    from users.
    ▸ Still keep it low-fi, ie. balsamiq
    ▸ Hand over mouse control to the user to
    navigate the mockup
    ▸ Try have a camera on the user face, non-
    verbal is precious.
    37
    

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38. Observe execution
    - Participants are given tasks to execute
    - Observe and activate interface (change page, put
    popup, etc.)
    - Do not give away hint, tips. Let the user figure out
    the interface, you won’t be there once it’s online!
    38
    

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39. ▸ Recap the feedback received
    ▸ Adjust story map based on this feedback
    ▸ Does the team feel confident of a other cycle
    would be needed?
    ▸ If team feel confident:
    ▹ Start assess the work to feed a agile
    backlog
    ▸ Else:
    ▹ Redo the cycle with new insight
    Step back or move on?
    39
    

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40. 40
    Empathize Ideate
    Prototype
    Test
    ● Gather data
    ● Go on the field
    ● Interviews
    ● How could we?
    ● 30 min experts
    ● Update: goals &
    personas
    ● Pains/Gains
    ● Themes
    ● Update story map
    ● Ideas
    ● Lightning demo
    ● Storyboard
    ● Mockups
    ● Low-fi
    ● Fail fast
    Rinse & repeat
    Define
    ● Review
    ● What work
    ● Role play
    ● Iterate quickly
    ● Redo the cycle
    

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41. Link to this presentation : bit.ly/2TIuQzQ
    Link to collaboration templates : bit.ly/2M3PsOR
    Nice site with many other tools : gamestorming.com
    Tools & Templates
    41
    

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42. To learn more
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43. Time to share
    - What tools are you guys now using to collaborate online ?
    - What could be other efficient way to conduct user research remotely ?
    - What success or failure did you had with the Design Thinking within your
    organisation?
    - Other Q&A
    43
    

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44. How reach me:
    Thanks!
    44
    www.
    linkedin.com/in/flegare
    francois.legare@bell.ca
    

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