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Pierre Fritsch
21. January 2015

Collaborative Design Studio with Bachmann

We think that a conversation is far better to communicate ideas than an “e-mail ping pong” with large attached documents. So we involve our clients in the design process as much as possible. It all starts with a first meeting or workshop, where we sit together. We figure out what the challenge is and begin to collaborate on drafts for solutions.

Last week, we did it with Bachmann, an innovative company, that develops “smart” electronic components & systems with a focus on customers needs. We spent two intensive days together to:

  1. Understand the actual situation: Our clients presented us their business (market and competition). We saw their processes, the constraints of the project and how they work. And then, we had the chance to directly test the product, a big intelligent Power Strip (playing with it made our comprehension easier and funnier)!

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  1. Define the problem statement (that’s the big part!): We listed all the potential problems or improvements. We took time to formalize this list with User stories.

  2. Prioritize the stories: We ordered the stories by importance. It gave us a good overview and a basic idea of the planning.

  3. Propose and visualize some solutions: For each critical user story, we made a “design studio”, where everybody took part, as a designer, and drew his ideas. It helped us to define rough solutions.

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As described in the Lean UX book, the “design studio” is done by follwing these steps:

  1. Problem definition and constraints
  2. Individual idea generation (diverge)
  3. Presentation and critique
  4. Iterate and refine (emerge)
  5. Team idea generation (converge)

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  1. Begin a new partnership… This workshop was an opportunity for us to meet nice people and to see how we can work together in the future.