Category: #livedraw

When I’m live-drawing my ear is often pulled towards those little tickly comments. Someone dribbles a little humour on a very tedious topic and a picture emerges. We were talking about backlogs. Someone mentioned swallowing the elephant…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

No, not that Moscow; this MoSCoW – or more helpfully, MoSCoW is a way of prioritising user stories into 4 categories: we must (M) implement this, we should (S) implement this, we could (C) implement this, and we won’t (W) implement this. You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to decide which category a story belongs to, and how they can change over time. One complicating factor is the perceived value of an untested idea, based on where it came from, and who gave birth to it…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

When you wish upon a star… this illustration has nothing to do with that. This is a handy little method of self reflection. You go round each participant and think of two things that went well (the two stars) and one wish, knowing what you know now. You can read about a real life example in this post by Laura Hilliger.

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Unmoderated user testing allows you to go wider with your tests as they can be performed at the users convenience, and doesn’t require human hand-holding. You never know what you might find…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

It’s my experience that the more you test with users, the more you’ll learn. I don’t just mean the results of your individual quantitative tests, but reading between the lines – listening, noticing, interpreting. Which in turn will also influence future tests.

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Blogging, sharing, being open – how do you expect people to know about the great things you’re up to if you don’t talk about them? Whatever your excuse is (I have my own, dear reader!) at some point you’ll find yourself under marketing pressure, when all along you could have been letting people take an interest – and at the same time craft a narrative of how you talk about them. Reminder to self…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Don’t overthink it has become a mantra to me. Whether I’m playing cricket or live drawing an idea, getting caught up in my head usually doesn’t end well. And in the end, after all the practice you’ve got under your belt, you’ve got to back yourself and just hit it…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Sometimes, in a live drawing session, someone will mention something that triggers an immediate picture in my head. A picture that demands to be drawn. And so it was, that someone whilst talking about user testing their product, was reflecting that they really only tested with the usual suspects. How can we make sure that it’s not just the usual suspects? Or just white men…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

It all looks a bit odd from this angle… There’s more than one way to get useful feedback from a user test. As best intentioned testing is often squeezed at the end of a development cycle, we usually just follow the path of least resistance. But if you want rich feedback, then you should approach from multiple angles…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Next time you’re facilitating an online session and need to get people thinking with an icebreaker, ask the participants about their favourite cheese. I guarantee you that the majority of people have very defined cheesy opinions. You may not even make it to the rest of your agenda…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.