MoCo UX Meetup: Design Thinking Workshops at Enterprise Scale
As a noob UX Designer looking for ways to get more in tune with the industry, I searched for nearby events to network and rub elbows with the experienced locals. With my main portfolio piece completed earlier this year, it was time to gain some confidence by diving into a MeetUp group!
After a few minutes of searching, I found a small local networking event hosted by MoCo (Montgomery County) UX at the FINRA office (Rockville, MD) on June 3rd, where I got to learn about how to best make design workshops more effective and efficient. The presenter was Natalie Mandriko, co-founder of a UX lean design agency, motherhood.design. She told a story about how she once guided a UX team through a design workshop and had the challenge of getting the results implemented successfully through other departments within a company she previously worked for.
This became a case study with the problem of: How do we practice design thinking in a way that improves our cross-departments collaboration? Throughout her presentation, we partnered up with a neighbor to answer a few design questions thrown at us to think and discuss:
Forgot to bring a pen, but thankfully could take notes on the stickies provided.
What is your biggest challenge with practicing design thinking? A large response from experienced UX designers in the room were about how to explain their ideas and validate them through stakeholders in the company.
What is your company’s top 3 problems that they are aware of? Here we broke off into small groups to discuss what were ongoing concerns from our own unique company experiences and perspectives. It was discovered that problems should always be defined first before any solutions get proposed. This often happens in reverse.
Who do you think we need to involve in the interview? Build the design workshop out of main stakeholders and designate an agreed upon owner of the outcome.
Yours truly is front and center, also snacking on a second round of free delicious pizza and salad.
By far, this intriguing presentation emphasized gathering the right leaders and influencers together to participate in a design workshop. These stakeholders are so important in helping to deliver the value of these events to cross-departments and also have to take ownership in the outcomes, or it can fail.
My favorite slide below is a story about how Natalie’s kindergarten daughter had a class assignment of listening to a teacher’s story and first be able to recall the main character’s problem and then to come up with a solution thereafter for him/her/it.
Solution is… the bear throws lady into a pond. Credit: Natalie Mandriko’s daughter.
Can’t believe I learned so much about the dynamics of UX design within a company. I definitely feel a stronger sense of awareness with participating in a future workshop one day.
Selfie/group photo by the MeetUp host, Dmitry. Fun times!