Skip to content
Resources
References and resources from the workshop
Type
Name
Type
Link
Notes
1
@2:50
Practice
Almost everything works better again if you unplug it for a bit, including your mind. Find the benefits of regular mindfulness without any fuss. Make yourself at home one time, or for a while.
@2:50 meets at the same time every single day for ten minutes of quiet together.
No previous experience, no registration needed.
2
Box Breathing - Sama Vritti
Practice
Popularized by recent citations from Navy Seals, and various medical journals, the yogic breathing practice Sama Vritti (meaning equal breath) can be done by inhaling for four counts, holding for four, exhaling for four counts, and holding for four. The practice can be repeated a few times or up to five minutes to notice benefits.
3
Cultivating mindfulness in design thinking
Reading
Mindfulness helps with self-awareness and releasing judgement.
4
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world, where did it go wrong?
Reading
15 - minute read that challenges assumptions about design thinking
5
Fake bus stops helps Alzheimer’s patients.
Reading
The in Dusseldorf, Germany, noticed that escaped Alzheimer’s patients often head directly to their only exit: Public transportation. So they built a fake bus stop, right in front of the clinic. Seniors trying to escape wander out and settle there—offering the staff a neutral ground to soothe them back inside.
6
Five Ways Mindfulness Can Make You a Better Designer - IDEO
Reading
7
Flow (psychology)
Reading
Flow theory suggests three conditions be met to achieve flow:
The activity must have clear goals and progress.
The task must provide clear and immediate feedback.
Confidence in the ability to complete the task is required.
8
HALT active listening
Framework
Halt — Halt whatever you are doing, scan your own body, get in the moment, engage.
Enjoy — Enjoy a breath as you choose to receive whatever is being communicated.
Ask — Ask yourself if you really know what they mean and if not, ask for clarification.
Reflect — Reflect and rephrase back what you hear.
9
How to effectively build pre-work into meetings
Framework
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has staff read memos at the beginning of meetings explaining, they are “supposed to create the context for what will then be a good discussion.” He added: “The reason we read them in the room, by the way, is because just like high school kids, executives will bluff their way through the meeting as if they’ve read the memo. Because we’re busy, and so you’ve got to actually carve out the time for the memo to get read.”
10
How to practice mindfulness in design
Reading
By incorporating mindfulness into my daily routine, including mindful breathing exercises and moments of gratitude, I have developed a heightened sense of presence and focus, enabling me to approach each design task with renewed energy and creativity.
11
MBSR
Practice
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) therapy is a meditation therapy, though originally designed for stress management, it is being used for treating a variety of illnesses such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, cancer, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, skin and immune disorders.
12
Mindful practices for greater focus, empathy, creativity
Practice
But design is both a science and an art. And yet, far less time and energy is spent on teaching designers how to be better skilled at being creative and innovative. We’ve mystified this aspect of design so much that we often perceive people as either being naturally creative geniuses … or not.
13
Om Sahana Vavatu
Practice
Om Sahana Vavatu (Sanskrit: ॐ सह नाववतु) is the name of an ancient Sanskrit mantra, commonly recited as a devotional prayer before sacred Hindu scriptures are studied.
Originally found in the Krishna Yajurveda Taittiriya Upanishad (2.2.2), it is often chanted at the start of a school class or at the beginning of a yoga practice.
14
Pomodoro Technique
Framework
The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It uses a kitchen timer to break work into intervals, typically 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for tomato, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used as a university student.
15
Presencing Institute
Practice
Theory U is a framework at the intersection of science, profound social and organizational change, and consciousness. It has been used by thousands of teams, organizations and communities worldwide to address more effectively our most pressing global challenges: climate change, food systems, inequality and exclusion, finance, healthcare and education.
17
Seven ways to practice mindfulness in UX design
Reading
Mindfulness is a powerful tool we can use whenever we want to reduce stress, bring attention and clarity to the present moment, and cut through the noise. We notice the distractions and sounds around us, but we are not distracted by them. Mindfulness is being aware and open to acceptance. We listen with empathy to our own thoughts and feelings, without judgment.
18
The Artist’s Way
Practice
The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life.
19
The Creative Act - A Way of Being
Reading
The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments--and lifetimes--of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
There are no rows in this table
A Designer’s Mindsets
State
Mindset
Be able to...
1
Trust
Navigate Ambiguity with Optimism
Remain comfortable “not knowing the answer” while cheerfully leading stakeholders through ambiguity toward clarity.
2
Empathy
Empathize with People & Contexts
Observe and work alongside people in various contexts to develop trust and empathy and test new ideas.
3
Generosity
Synthesize Information Generously
Invest ample time to make sense all kinds of information and inputs to surface themes, insights, and opportunities.
4
Mindfulness
Move Between Concrete & Abstract
Practice the ability to zoom into detailed features, attributes, or solutions and back out to contexts and systems.
5
Play
Rapidly Experiment without Attachment
Quickly prototype in any format to make ideas real and act on insights without becoming attached to any of them.
6
Connection
Craft & Communicate Intentionally
Show design work and share stories with the most appropriate format and level of resolution for the audience and feedback desired.
7
Gratitude
Design the Design Work with Gratitude
Recognize a project as a design challenge to be grateful for. Decide on collaborators, tools, techniques, and processes to approach it.
There are no rows in this table
Design's Double Diamond
Design Phase
Description
1
Frame
Define the problem and set the boundaries within which the design process will operate.
2
Empathize
Grasp your target soul’s perspectives, emotions, and needs, observing the systems impacting them.
3
Reframe
Challenge assumptions and redefine the problem statement to encourage innovative solutions.
4
Ideate
Generate a wide range of creative ideas and concepts without judgment, constraints or attachement.
5
Prototype
Build tangible representations of ideas to visualize and test their feasibility and potential.
6
Validate
Gather feedback through real-world testing to validate and refine prototypes for effective solutions.
There are no rows in this table
Service Design Tools & Methods
Phase
Name
Description
Frame
5
Problem Framing Statement
A single problem statement. A set of agreed assumptions. Problem Statement example: Given that: (Business situation), How might we help: (Person/group), To (do/be/feel/achieve): (Their goal), So that: (Measurable outcome).
Problem 5 Ws
Who, What, Where, When, Why
Design Brief
Objectives and goals of the project, Budget and schedule, Target audience, Scope of the project, SWOT analysis.
Discovery Guide
Establish your target user to research. Who are they, what kinds of activities will you engage them in? How will you reach them?
Quant Research
Competitive Analysis, POS data, User data, Market research
Empathize
6
JTBD
Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” Clayton Christensen says, “People buy products and services to get a job done”.
In Place Interview
Go to a person’s home, work, or play location and interview and observe using open ended questions. Why, how, what. “Tell me more about that.”
Ride Along
Follow someone through an activity or process to understand more.
Play
Gaming, sorting, ranking, diary, empathy map, etc. to get the user out of their comfort zone and thinking freely
Empathy Map
A way to categorize the types of observations from in-place interviews
Five Whys
Five whys is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem by repeating the question "Why?" five times. The answer to the fifth why should reveal the root cause of the problem.
Reframe
5
Personas and Journeys Maps
Based on highlights or themes from multiple data sources
Ishikawa Diagram
Shows the potential causes of a specific event or process. Commonly used in product development to brainstorm and outline the different steps within a given process. Can be used in service design and brand marketing to show potential motivations or constraints. Starts with a specific problem statement of Job to Be Done. Organize into specific influences or categories. Useful for various levels of influence, Self, Family, Friends, Neighbors, Town, Country, World.
User Stories
In software development and product management, a user story is an informal, natural language description of features of a software or service system. Stories are written from the perspective of an end user or user of a system, and may be recorded on index cards, post notes, or digitally in project management software. User stories are a type of boundary object. They facilitate sense making and communication; and may help software teams document their understanding of the system and its context.
HMW Statements
At the end of a discovery, the team should come together, agree on the top things it found out, and use this knowledge to frame design challenges. To prevent individuals from suggesting their pet solutions, which might have little resemblance to the problems found, construct How Might We questions that frame the problem(s) for ideation. How might we ensure more people pay their taxes before the deadline? How might we help employees stay productive and healthy when working from home? How might we make customers feel that their information is safe and secure when creating an account?
Service Blueprint
The service blueprint is a technique originally used for service design, but has also found applications in diagnosing problems with operational efficiency. The technique was first described by G. Lynn Shostack, a bank executive, in the Harvard Business Review in 1984. The service blueprint is an applied process chart which shows the service delivery process from the customer's perspective. The service blueprint has become one of the most widely used tools to manage service operations, service design, and service.
Ideate
2
Mind Mapping
A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those major ideas. Can be done internally or with customers and stakeholders.
Analogous Cases
It may feel silly to visit an Apple store when you’re designing for those living in difficult circumstances, but you may unlock the key to a memorable customer experience or a compelling way to arrange products. Analogous Settings can help you isolate elements of an experience, interaction, or product, and then apply them to whatever design challenge you’re working on. Besides, getting out from behind your desk and into a new situation is always a great way to spur creative thinking.
Prototype
3
Future Blueprint
Similar to a Service Blueprint but including future state innovations that the team may produce or create.
Storyboard
A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a brand or service sequence. The storyboarding process was developed at Walt Disney Productions in the 1930s and has been used for storytelling, media production, and design prototyping.
Wireframes Wireflows
In the UX field, wireframes are a common deliverable to show page-level layout ideas, whereas flowcharts are useful for documenting complex workflows and user tasks. However, despite the fact that both of these deliverables remain in common use among UX professionals, there are situations in which they are suboptimal tools for communicating design ideas, particularly when documenting apps or service interventions that don't have unique pages, but instead feature a few core pages which change content (or layout, or service action) dynamically based on user interaction. An alternative deliverable called Wireflow has emerged as a solution to these issues, used to show designs in the context of common user tasks.
Validate
4
Focus Group
A focus group is a group interview involving a small number of demographically similar people or participants who have other common traits/experiences. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are used in market research to understand better people's reactions to products or services or participants' perceptions of shared experiences.
A/B Test
A/B testing (also known as bucket testing, split-run testing, or split testing) is a user experience research methodology. A/B tests consist of a randomized experiment that usually involves two variants (A and B), although the concept can be also extended to multiple variants of the same variable. It includes application of statistical hypothesis testing or "two-sample hypothesis testing" as used in the field of statistics. A/B testing is a way to compare multiple versions of a single variable, for example by testing a subject's response to variant A against variant B, and determining which of the variants is more effective.
Beta Launch
A beta launch is an important stage of a software release process. It marks the first time that external users will be exposed to a new software product and is a great opportunity for companies to collect valuable feedback. In the case of launching a new brand campaign, feature, or service offering, creating a beta launch for selected user or customer groups can build buy-in, brand equity and give valuable customer feedback.
Pilot
If a Live Prototype is a quick look at how your solution behaves in the marketplace, a Pilot is a sustained engagement. Pilots can last months and will fully expose your solution to market forces. At this point you’re not testing an idea—should my product be green? do I need a different logo?—you’re testing an entire system. Ideally you’ll have run a few Live Prototypes before going to Pilot so that some of the kinks are worked out. During a Pilot you’ll fully execute on your idea finding out if it truly works the way you envisioned by running it with all the staff, space, and resources necessary. You’ll learn if your idea really is desirable, viable, and feasible, and what it might look like to do it at scale. If it’s a success, you’ll head to market.
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.