IA Summit - Key Session - Project Touchstones (E)

(image: sticky room, infinity diagrams, Jesss McMullin)
Jess McMullin was talking during his presentation "Project Touchstones" at the IA Summit about efficient methods that focus on the value for both Business(Return on Investment) and Users(Return on Experience). To me his methods sounded very usefull to synchronise the different views of stakeholders of a project(client side and agency side). This particular points, if not solved correctly, can easily eat up a tremendous part of the project budget.

He recommends the following approach:

• Get the right people in the room, work together to create artifacts and models that let them articulate business needs.
• Peel Back the layers
• Start Small: Partner, Pilot, Publicize

From my point of view (To several of the situations that Jess mentions in his talk I find parallels to my daily teamwork again) I would say the following are well worth to consider to optimise your work relationships with clients and your inhouse teams:

• The opportunity we have as user experience practitioners to become a Peer with Business
  
• User Centered Designers Understand, Solve, Evaluate and Refine Things to get the right solution(Through Iteration) - great but not very sufficient.
  
• We have to understand what creates the Value in our projects!
  
• Value Centered Design: Business Goals and Context and Human Goals and Context
• Business Centered Design: 1. Using design methods and tools to understand business needs 2. Beyond the run-of-the-mill business discovery 3. One half of value-centered design 4. Beginning of becoming a business peer.
  
• 2 Ways to think about Deliverables: a) Deliverables That Define Solutions(Review & Approve) - always Prower Imbalance, b) Deliverables That Define Problems (Read: Arias and Fischer 2000: "Fundamental challenges facing communities of interest are found in building a shared understanding of the task at hand")...
• Delivelables that define Problems Together help us to become a Peer in Practice
• Building a bridge to overcome different viewpoints
• Deliverables that define problems together
  
• Define Problems together(e.g. Infinity diagramms from interview transscripts): One of the keys to becoming the Peer with Business
• Principles: 1. Codesign 2. Simple 3. Concrete 4. Flexible 5. Evidence-Based 6. Surface Agendas
• ...
• The whole speach will soon be in the IA Voice Podcast...

View his presentation here: