Sprintboards - A Simple & Clean Project Status Report Template for Asana users. Instagantt. Adding Visual Goodness to Your Ideas. Inspiring content from across OpenIDEO & IDEO's other work Here at OpenIDEO, we think that visualising your ideas is a significant step in engaging others to appreciate the goodness on all your switched-on thinking and get onboard to collaborate as you develop it further. Visualising can take many forms and may be used at various stages in the developing your ideas – from a quick sketch as you start out to a diagram, video or prototype as you flesh things out more. It also helps you to move from thinking to doing – which can add a fresh dimension to your idea to help it flourish.
Here's some tips on using various kinds of visuals to tell the story of your idea with higher impact. Sketch You don't need to be the world's best artist to jump in and sketch something for your idea. Diagram for the Glassdoor concept from our Connecting Communities Challenge Diagram Video Making a video is a really great way to explain your idea. Opencity from our Vibrant Cities Challenge Prototype. Tips and Tricks to Run an Effective Prototype. Inspiring content from across OpenIDEO & IDEO's other work Why do we prototype ideas and what makes a good prototype? These are important questions for our community as we seek to create social impact. The core goal of a prototype is to assess the viability of an idea or a part of the idea with potential end users involved. It's worthwhile questioning some of the assumptions behind your idea and trying to test them out before spending effort developing the other 95% of the idea. A prototype can lead to surprising new insights which add fresh, human-centered perspectives to your thinking.
You've already been creative in coming up with your idea – now it's time to turn that creativity to the notion of testing parts of it out. With these thoughts in mind, we were excited to participate over last summer in the IDEO.org and Acumen run free Human Centered Design course to sharpen our skills. Packed with tips, including: What to Prototype Ways to Prototype Getting Feedback Create an Experience Map. Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool. As a kid, I spent hours drawing and sketching ideas that popped into my head. Article Continues Below I used drawing as a primary language for capturing thoughts, exploring ideas, and then sharing those ideas. Teachers and mentors encouraged me, helping to sustain sketching as a key skill throughout school and into my professional career. Good fortune has ignited my passion to become a sketch advocate, helping others rediscover sketching as a powerful problem-solving and communication tool.
I’m excited to share why sketching can be so beneficial, show samples of sketches, and provide helpful resources. My goal is to encourage you—whether you’re a designer, front-end developer, coder, writer or whatever you may be—to add sketching to your toolkit. But I can’t sketch—I’m not an artist! When I suggest sketching as a visual thinking tool, I often I hear “I’m not an artist” or “I can’t draw.” When you feel inadequate in your sketching, pause and reconsider your perspective. Fig 1. 1. Fig 2. 2. Design Better And Faster With Rapid Prototyping. Advertisement The old adage, “a picture speaks a thousand words” captures what user interface prototyping is all about: using visuals to describe thousands of words’ worth of design and development specifications that detail how a system should behave and look.
In an iterative approach to user interface design, rapid prototyping is the process of quickly mocking up the future state of a system, be it a website or application, and validating it with a broader team of users, stakeholders, developers and designers. Doing this rapidly and iteratively generates feedback early and often in the process, improving the final design and reducing the need for changes during development. Prototypes range from rough paper sketches to interactive simulations that look and function like the final product. The keys to successful rapid prototyping are revising quickly based on feedback and using the appropriate prototyping approach. The Rapid Prototyping Process Scoping A Prototype Find the Story Do… Don’t… Design Thinking. How to Use Persona Empathy Mapping. “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”-Theodore Roosevelt Empathy: it’s a buzzword in the UX design world.
Everybody’s doing it! But what exactly are they doing? There isn’t a quick “Empathy Filter” that we can apply to our work or our team, no formula to pump out results, and no magic words to bring it forth. There is, however, a simple workshop activity that you can facilitate with stakeholders (or anyone responsible for product development, really) to build empathy for your end users. Empathy mapping helps us consider how other people are thinking and feeling.
Image from Gamestorming. We add a twist to the technique by focusing on personas during post-synthesis workshops with our stakeholders. Sketch: Persona Empathy Mapping How does Persona Empathy Mapping help? Persona empathy mapping done on large sheets of paper. Case Study We asked participants to complete a worksheet reflecting what our persona might feel, think, and dotweet this Prep Time: 1 hour, max.