Somehow, incomprehensibly, it's almost the start of week 7, and with it, the start of Rapid Ideation Sprint 2.
Before we get to that though, I want to wrap up Rapid Ideation Sprint 1 and set out a few things I've learned that I'd like to think about for next time.
I'll (try to) keep this one fairly brief...
Testing
'Testing' is the fifth element of the design thinking process. It's also the focus of Day 5 of the Design Sprint methodology, where you take the prototype you've developed on Day 4 and test it with real potential users.
Ambitiously, I wanted to find 5-8 people to test my prototype with. Ultimately I only managed to fit in a couple between work/life activities, but just that bit of insight showed me the huge potential value of getting feedback from others to validate your thought processes and spark ideas for further development. This made me reflect on the value of feedback in general, and how it can serve different purposes and take different forms depending on the context in which it's given or sought.
Feedback in a learning context
Feedback is “one of the essential elements of good communication” (Ballentine Dykes et al, 2017: 97). In learning environments, like the MA this blog is part of, giving and receiving feedback can be incredibly helpful to build confidence, self-esteem, and belief in your own or the recipient’s abilities. It can help both you and the recipient to grow by looking at the things you or they do well and should keep doing (positive feedback) and the areas where you or they may wish to focus on developing (negative feedback) (ibid. 99).
Crucially, giving feedback is not about judgement, shame, or belittling. In my field of work – UX content design – we use ‘content critiques’ (known as ‘crits’) to give and receive feedback on our designs. As defined by content designer and strategist Sarah Richards, these crits have rules so that they “become safe environments for meaningful feedback,” including being respectful and only giving constructive criticism (Richards, 2017: 175-177). Feedback in these scenarios, then, should be objective and specific, including both positive and negative elements so that it both uplifts and motivates the recipient to continue their practice and grow in the right areas.
Feedback in a user-testing context
The kind of feedback you might receive when testing a prototype with users is, by necessity, often quite different from the feedback you might get from your classmates or colleagues. You aren't looking for critique to be framed in an explicitly positive way. Here, you want your users to be completely, 100% honest in their reactions to your product, so you can see exactly what they do and exactly what they don't do with the product and objectively gauge their feelings towards it through well-constructed interview questions and careful observation.
You don't want to come across as an 'expert' to the extent that you fall foul of so-called 'acquiescence bias', also known as 'friendliness bias' – "a systematic bias in data caused by some respondents tending to agree with whatever is presented to them" (IPSOS 2016).
Nor do you want 'social desirability bias' to lead participants to give answers they think you will find more socially acceptable than their true feelings.
User research, then, can be quite the bias minefield. I'm looking forward to delving deeper in the next module later in the year.
Our attitudes to feedback
It's also important to be mindful of our own mood, attitudes, and reactions when we receive feedback. While challenging or negative feedback might not always be pleasant to hear, it can help us to hone our skills in the directions where we may need more practice. It's crucial to try and separate feedback about something you do – for example, a design you create or a blog posts you share – from direct value judgements of you as a person. Reflecting, paraphrasing, and summarising what you hear and checking you've understood correctly, as well as asking questions or for specific suggestions or examples, can be effective ways to get the most out of feedback.
A few things to bear in mind for the next sprint
- In Rapid Ideation Sprint 1, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do a full Design Sprint as a solo practitioner. This time, I want to take some of that pressure off and experiment with a variety of different ideation techniques before settling on an idea.
- I want to look in particular at the principles presented in the Interaction Design Foundation's 'Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services' course which I'm aiming to work through over the next 3-4 weeks.
- As a potential extra challenge for myself, I quite fancy seeing if I can use some form of gamification in my product, whatever it ends up being.
-Finally, I want to set myself more realistic boundaries for any research I do in this sprint. The research I did for my Kindshare website was extremely useful, but I felt overwhelmed at times by the volume, particularly given we only had two weeks to 'make the thing'. This time, I want to strike a more evenly weighted balance between ideation, research, and prototyping, and see what happens.
This is the final walkthrough of my Kindshare website that I shared with my peers. I'm quite proud of it – seeing it go from nothing to something in just two weeks is quite amazing. That also applies to my classmates' creations.
References
Ballentine Dykes, F; Postings, T; De Winter, A and Crouch, A. (2017) Counselling Skills and Studies, 2nd Edition. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
IPSOS. 2016. 'Ipsos Encyclopedia - Acquiescence Bias (aka Yea Saying or Friendliness Effect)'. Available at: https://www.ipsos.com/en/ipsos-encyclopedia-acquiescence-bias-aka-yea-saying-or-friendliness-effect [accessed: 8 July 2022].
Richards, S. (2017) Content Design. Content Design London: London. Kindle Edition.
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