Most of the three dozen people convened by the irrepressible Aaron Silvers for a recent retreat in Sedona, Arizona, would say they’re designers, but not instructional designers. We’re software nerds, change agents, standards developers, experience designers, game developers, and problem solvers. We came together at Up to All of Us to compare notes, find connections, and share the tools of our craft.
Sedona is a magic spot in the high desert, about two hours north of Phoenix. Kurt Hanks led a two-day workshop on Paradigm Mapping before the official two-day event kicked off. The following two days were peppered with short sessions on design techniques and concepts that we then applied to projects we were working on.
You don’t hear about tools like these at ASTD meetings and traditional training gatherings. At UTAOU, we were more into developing platforms than programs. We focused more on performance and less on training.
Mindmapping. My colleague Clark Quinn mindmapped the main event. Mindmaps are excellent for visualizing relationships.
Visual Language. Dave Gray inspired us to Just Draw It. This is vital. We were all sketching like mad throughout the weekend. Anyone can draw. JFDI. It will open your mind. And help you open other people’s minds.
Personas. Picture your users. Empathize with them. Respect them. What are their motives? Their likes? Tell stories about them. Especially important for engineers (because “they don’t get empathy.”)
Learner Experience Design. Envision cascades of resources, activities, artifacts, and reflections.
Bodystorming. Physically act out a situation to understand it. Do a skit. First person. People can represent systems or objects. We modeled a stranded passenger dealing with an airline’s telephone customer support, both real and how it might be.
Gamestorming. “Knowledge games are models of business scenarios, environments and interactions. Games not only model systems, but at the same time they allow the players to experience those systems from within, just as customers do. People participate in games because they want to, not because they have to or because someone told them to – just like real customers.”
Cognitive Apprenticeship. Nearly a quarter century ago, this seminal paper outlined what it takes to make apprenticeship work in the knowledge era:
• identify the processes of the task and make them visible to students;
• situate abstract tasks in authentic contexts, so that students understand the relevance of the work; and
• vary the diversity of situations and articulate the common aspects so that students can transfer what they learn
Improv. Be fast, not right. No negatives (Yes, and…) We did word games. We fenced with our hands. We did living sculpture. Loosen up. Let go of restraint.
Journey Mapping (AKA Experience Mapping). We did this following bodystorming. Breaking an experience down into AEIOU steps enables you to suspect judgment and shape the change conversation. (AEIOU = Activity, Environment, Interaction, Objects, Users).
Rapid Prototyping. Make a model. It can be paper or 3×5 cards. Leave it messy. Use it once and toss it.
Storyboarding. Tell your story visually. Co-create it. Make it tangible.
Sand table. Someone suggested letting people model scenarios with puzzle pieces purchased at garage sales. (I keep a bunch of toys, games, and magic tricks handy at the Internet Time Lab.)
Value proposition. For __________ who _________ we deliver __________ with _________ that __________.
For (customer) who (motivation) we deliver (service) with (detail) that (benefits). Make sure you have one that’s crisp. Similar to the Elevator Pitch.
70:20:10. In the workplace, 70% of learning is experiential, 20% comes from interactions with others like coaches and mentors, and 10% is formal.
Business model canvas. From Osterwalder’s Business Model Generation.
These additional design techniques and frameworks popped up in private conversations:
Story Borrowing. Tell other’s stories as if they were yours.
Shadowing. Follow the customer.
Self-actualizing organizations, meta coaching, international coaching federation, mindlines
Marketing Metaphoria, Zaltman
One of my two main objectives in attending UTAOU was to rekindle my use of design thinking. I love to draw and doodle and design things, yet left to my own devices, I revert all too easily to text. Now I’m back in drawing mode and I hope to stay on that plane. If only it were easier to scribble in blog posts!
My other objective was to advance my thinking about converting today’s dysfunctional corporations into tomorrow’s lithe value-creating organisms. I’m throwing the design tools at the dilemma. My fingers are crossed.
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