No matter how great your designs are, the way you communicate with your clients/business partners can make or break your engagement, especially as design challenges and organizations become more complex.
But what actually makes some meetings go well, and others not? We’ve heard “Be storytellers,” “Provide the right context,” and “Set expectations,” but what does that look like in practice?
I’ll provide real-life examples of how we’ve done this in our presentations for client engagements. We’ll include examples of our fundamental concepts we live by. No surprises. Over-communicate. Tell them how to be and what to do in the meeting. Design every slide of a presentation, not just the “designs.” Tell a story. Assume your clients have no idea what your meeting is all about (put yourself in their shoes).
It always goes better when you’re well prepared; we’ll help you get there.
25. awasudesign.com/download
Timeline: Design Phase 1
Mid-Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan
SITE MAP
UCD PLAN
USER FLOWS
10/26 10/28 11/22 12/7 12/16 12/22 1/12 1/18 1/26
PROTOTYPE
ITERATION
Home & Nav Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4
Home Page Approach Wireframe Home Page, Iterate wireframes, Iterate wireframes, Extend content
& Navigation System Lorem, Ipsum apply visual design apply visual design & visual design
to "Front Doors"
Prototype Iteration Timeline
Prototype pages will be created with Adobe Fireworks CS5.
Wireframes
Wireframes will be updated with visual design
Draft content will be incorporated and prototype content at the final stage.
Prototype
Content Development of prototype content will into wireframes for key pages.
leverage the following items from the
Content Team: Acme Editorial Guide,
Content Positioning Templates, and
content outlines for each page.
Visual Design
While the site map, user flows, and Prototype Iteration 1 are in progress, the Visual Designer will
develop visual design solutions for the Acme home page and visual explorations for infographic styles.
v1.0 Content
(content for the The content strategy for the live site will drive the content strategy for the prototype. There are a number of tasks,
live site) deliverables, roles, and milestones being planned by the Content Team.
Core Review Sponsor Review Feedback Deliverable Sign-Off Iteration Sign-Off
John D John D John D John D John D Designate feedback coordinator to Specific deliverable sign-off Approval that we're moving in the
Jane D Jane D Jane D Jane D Jane D consolidate feedback and receive details on subsequent pages right direction and can proceed into
John D John D John D John D John D all levels of approval the next iteration
35. A little kingdom I possess,
where thoughts and feelings
dwell;
and very hard the task I find
of governing it well
- Louisa May Alcott
36. “It‟s not just a gut reaction.
It‟s not a judgment.
It‟s a comparison of the design
or idea you‟re evaluating
against the goals and objectives the
creator is trying to ”
satisfy with it.
- Aaron Irizarry and Adam
Connor
40. Project Overview: Mission Statement
Mission Statement for this Engagement
We will design a new Acme interaction model that is well-received, enables
seamless user adoption, and most importantly, increases productivity for
thousands of Acme users
For the sake of…
Acme supports team members in the pursuit of better service to clients and greater
revenue for Acme Corporation.
How will the users lives be different?
Acme users will sell more, better informed, convey greater confidence, and make
smoother handoffs.
How will we accomplish this?
We will focus on workflows, design for ease of use, regularly test with users, and
work collaboratively with the internal team.
47. Guiding Principles for Design
During our discovery phase, we identified a number of opportunities
to improve the Acme experience. We have organized these
opportunities into 3 main themes, or guiding principles, that will
help shape the new experience.
Principle 1: Increase Productivity
Principle 2: Optimize for Service Excellence
Principle 3: Instill Trust
Acme Design Strategy Presentation – page 7
48. Principle 1:
Increase Productivity
Help me work as efficiently as possible.
“ How would I measure success? If I were to go out and visit Acme offices, Lorem Ipsum would be on most users’
”
desktops most of the time, because they prefer this tool that is helping them be more effective.
- Jane Doe, Senior Manager, Important Group, Feb 2012
Acme Design Strategy Presentation – page 8
49. Principle 1: Increase Productivity
Managing Lorem Ipsum Section
I want tools to review and manage
lorem ipsum so that I can focus on
my most valuable clients
• I want granular control over which clients appear in lorem
ipsum
• I want advanced controls for
searching, filtering, sorting, grouping, and pagination of
lorem ipsum
• I want predefined, targeted views of lorem ipsum that
support my common use cases, and I want to customize these
views as needed
• When using search or lorem ipsum views, I want visibility
into load time vs. data trade-offs
• I want to edit directly in lorem ipsum table views without
having to make additional clicks
• I want to make updates to multiple items at once
• I want to export and/or print lorem ipsum views
Acme Design Strategy Presentation – page 10
50. Principle 1: Increase Productivity
Search
I want an easy way to find a single
client or groups of clients based on
specific criteria
• I want to quickly find a client
• I want to search using advanced criteria, such as:
• Clients added in last six months
• Only clients in the lorem ipsum with more than $2
million in assets
• Partial criteria like first name and city
• I want to configure the sorting and grouping presentation for
the results
Acme Design Strategy Presentation – page 9
53. GET THEM TO COMMIT
“Do you have any concerns about the
direction?”
“At the end of the last meeting, there were
some concerns about _____. How are you
feeling about that now?”
“If we present this in two days, what do you think
will be _____‟s concerns?”
54. GET THEM TO PARTICIPATE
And now Marissa‟s
going to introduce this Thanks Craig. What
next section. we‟re going to cover
next is…
61. Eyes on the Prize
“ We want to be perceived as forward-thinking and
”
sophisticated…and, of course, we want to drive sales.
“ How would I measure success? If I were to go out and visit our
offices, this tool would be on most users‟ desktops most of the time;
because they prefer it. Not „I have to use it‟, but rather „I choose to
use it.‟ That would” success.
be
105. Walking through the designs
• Weave goals & objectives into the user narrative
• Show each interaction step by step
• Remind them how to give feedback
• Guide feedback to goals and objectives
• Advocate using goals & objectives
• Pick your battles
• Solve later
106. 1 Establish strong relationships
Lead everyone through the story of the
2 engagement
Create alignment on Goals & Objectives
3 …and then some
Attain “pre-approval” and develop allies
4 before the meeting
5 Elevate the Conversation to Strategy
Lessons learned from teaching for five years in the 90s.
The first steps to building a foundation so meetings go better.
It sounds obvious, but the first step is just to connect. Get out of your seat and meet them.
The second part of building a relationship is diving into stakeholder meetings. It’s the engagement details that form the foundation for successful meetings later.
One of our favorite stakeholder question is called Heaven and Hell.
Stakeholder that swoops into a meeting halfway through the project with uninformed opinions: Swoop and Poop.
So, we’ve established relationships and learned as much as you can. But that’s not going to be enough for those thirty people in the room and 18 on the phone. They need to know what this meeting’s all about. Where does it fit in. And if we wait until the meeting, we’ve waited way too long. We have to show them in great detail at the beginning what to expect.
We’ve got to lead and guide everyone through the story of the engagement. Think about the word PLANNING. Most designers I know don’t get into this field to PLAN. We don’t think of it as planning. We think of it as DESIGNING THE STORY OF THE ENGAGEMENT.
I’m going to show you a bunch of quick examples of some of the ways we’ve designed the story for all sorts of different engagements. In the upper right corner of some of them, you’ll see this link that says “awasudesign.com/download”. That means you can download a PDF of this diagram as well as the source file, so you can use these for your own projects.
I’m going to show you a bunch of quick examples of some of the ways we’ve designed the story for all sorts of different engagements. In the upper right corner of some of them, you’ll see this link that says “awasudesign.com/download”. That means you can download a PDF of this diagram as well as the source file, so you can use these for your own projects.
Example of one project’s stages
Example of one project’s timeline. Even the simplest projects can benefit from a designed story.
Example of one project’s timeline.
1 of 2 slides to tell a story of an iterative project that would have multiple features.
Another way to describe an iterative process
Example of one project’s timeline. This one has outcomes for each stage.
Example of one project’s timeline.
Example of one project’s timeline, plus other details.
Example of one project’s stage and flow. This one covers other workstreams and departments than just design.
Example of one project’s conceptual model. Telling a different story than timeline.
Telling the story of what a framework is (2 of 4)
Telling the story of what a framework is (3 of 4)
Telling the story of what a framework is (3 of 4)Transition:The previous examples have focused on telling a story with pictures and designs. Sometimes you need to tell a story with more words.
Design brief / Statement of Work to tell the story.
Onesheeters that tell a story of individual design activities / deliverables.
So, we’ve established relationships, learned as much as we could during stakeholder interviews, and we’ve designed the story of the engagement. We must be ready to review designs. We’re all smart people. We’ve got thoughts and feelings about things. Yes, and that can be a dangerous thing. A little kingdom I possess, where thoughts and feelings dwell;and very hard the task I findof governing it well. - Louisa May AlcottIt’s hard to govern our thoughts and feelings. Not only that, but you’re going to govern your thoughts and feelings one way and Kevin governs his thoughts and feelings another way. We need a way to make sure we’re going to be governing our thoughts and feelings together. How are we going to do that?
We can govern our thoughts and feelings according to Goals and Objectives. NICE! We need alignment. We want everyone to have alignment on the Goals and Objectives right from the beginning. And guess where we go for that alignment? Yep, we gotta travel to the beginning of the project.
The third step to making review meetings is to get alignment on Goals and Objectives. But that’s not all. We need alignment on lots of things. And, we need to do it early, well before the review meeting.
And one of the best places to get alignment is in the kickoff meeting. (We could easily spend all day just on kickoff meetings. If you want to know more, see Kevin Hoffman’s work. He’s got great articles and talks about running meetings. Highly recommend knowing his stuff)I’m going to cover a few key ways that we handle kickoff meetings that make our design reviews go better.
Hold the kickoff early, but the first week. Give time to work with business partners. Give time to prepare.
Here’s one level of getting alignment. We’ve got a mission statement that states why we’re all here, and then it breaks it down:For the sake of…How will the users’ lives be different?How will we accomplish this?
We also want to represent that we’re experts, leaders, and equal partners. So, we can speak the language of the business, not just design.
Here we’re creating alignment on questions that we asked the stakeholders. This is one of the sentence completions.
Here’s another sentence completion that we asked before the kickoff. More alignment. You can see we want the kickoff to be more than a meet and greet. You’re going to have a full team in the room. You’re going to make a first impression of the kinds of meetings they can expect. So, we want to accomplish something in the kickoff.
For example, this project was for a relationship management tool. It wasn’t clear how much focus should be on sales versus service. Instead of having it as a bullet point on a slide, we did it this way.Where would you put the slider? Then we wait. And eventually someone says, “I’d move it to 3 because…” And this is where it gets interesting. Now they’re having a conversation with each other that they never had before. Imagine how much worse a design meeting might go later if our designs are too Service focused, and nobody knew that was an issue. Not only are we avoiding that problem for ourselves, we’re also getting them more integrated in ownership of this process.
You can make sliders from any pairings.
The end of the Discover period (aka Research and Strategy, etc.) is a Design Strategy meeting/document.
Sample slide from a Design Strategy document
Sample slide from a Design Strategy document
Sample slide from a Design Strategy document (there were 10 of these pages in the document)
Sample slide from a Design Strategy document (there were 10 of these pages in the document)
We’ve established relationships, learned a lot, designed the story of the engagement, and ‘we’ve gotten alignment on Goals & Objectives and then some. We must be ready now? Almost.
You do this with key people. Core team members. The main client. A counterpart product manager. Meet with them before the meeting. Sometimes they just passively listen and only speak up during the big meeting in a couple days and you’re wondering, “Why did he tell us that point of view two days ago when we showed him this stuff?” We could’ve addressed that.
Ask questions to make sure you’re clear how everyone’s feeling.
Now we’re ready to actually have a design review.
This is the single most important concept of the entire presentation. It’s not just a collection of mockups.
Provide context. Hold their hand. Remember, the audience has been working on lots of other things since your last meeting. They have NOT been working on the same thing you’re working on. So, tell them.
It’s easy to make a page like this. Even for small engagement.
Here’s what happened since the last meeting. Or, make it cumulative. Whatever’s best for your story.
Where we are in the project.
We show this at the beginning of every engagement.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.After this slide, then we get into the designs themselves.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
The following seven pages are taken from the beginning of a 30-page site map document for a 500-page site.
Cover page
Tell them what’s going to be covered. More importantly, tell them what’s NOT going to be covered.
Levels of Zoom
The entire initiative – big picture.
How users get into the site. We used this because questions about this were side tracking earlier meetings.
Business goals for each part of the new site.
This is the first page of the actual site map. There were 25 pages following this that went into detail for each section.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
Cover page
How we got to this. What we used to create user flows.
What sign off means.
Conceptual depiction of why we’re only going to use certain tasks for each user profile.
A guide that shows what each user profile is going to do in the user flows.
This table shows that we’re going to cover each important part of the site in the user flows.
These are important parts of the redesign that are considered critical. We spelled it out here to make sure everyone understands the business importance and how these things will work. And, to make sure everyone knows we’re focusing on the important stuff. These items can be found in the subsequent flows.
These are important parts of the redesign that are considered critical. We spelled it out here to make sure everyone understands the business importance and how these things will work. And, to make sure everyone knows we’re focusing on the important stuff. These items can be found in the subsequent flows.
Then, the flows begin. There were many pages of the actual flows. The important thing is that we’ve set the project up so deliberately up to this point, that it’s much more successful when we get to the flows.
Then, the flows begin. There were many pages of the actual flows. The important thing is that we’ve set the project up so deliberately up to this point, that it’s much more successful when we get to the flows.
One of many examples of how to set up the document so that the meeting goes more smoothly.
Cover page
We used to do this only verbally. Then, we slowed down to tell them what a wireframe is. Spell it out.
Bring the goals and objectives into the wireframe review. This is NOT the first time the client has seen these. We’ve agreed to these details earlier. We’re reviewing them now in the context of the review meeting.
Bring the goals and objectives into the wireframe review. This is NOT the first time the client has seen these. We’ve agreed to these details earlier. We’re reviewing them now in the context of the review meeting. After this slide, we get into the actual wireframes.
In general, here’s a guideline for how to talk about the designs.
Section heading
Here’s where we start going through designs. Walk through them using a narrative. Solicit feedback based on all the things we’ve been doing up to this point. The specifics of design critique are the topic of other talks and workshops. Aaron I and Adam Connor’s stuff. This is all about getting everyone so ready that the critiques go so much better. After this slide, we get into the actual designs.
Some key points that we follow for going through designs.
Closing thoughtsYou’re in charge. You’re the one in charge of your meeting. Everyone in the meeting wants someone to tell them what to do. Be that person. Your confidence, preparation, and competence will benefit everyone.