Retro for Monday, Jul 18

Adam Joel

What are we doing well?
— Being critical of our own decisions in a healthy way
— We care about and include everyone's input
— Reaching out to our community partners to make sure our solutions are wanted & have great potential

What are we doing less well?
— We get distracted more than we did before
(because we're more comfortable with each other, sometimes feel burned out, or feel relieved that we know where we're going)
— Holding ourselves accountable

What measurable changes will we make to improve?
— Timeboxing breaks in addition to work tasks
(with more designated timebox managers)
— Re-instituting 15-minute chunks of the day
— Scheduling breaks ahead of time

Stand for Monday, Jul 11

Noah Rosenthal

Stories Completed (2)

Modify and synthesize brainstorming ideas (4 tasks)

Iterate our HCW statements (4 tasks)

Stories Started (1)

Begin partnership with Northwestern Solar House (4 tasks)

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
Staying on task - we just need to hold each other accountable.
"Killing" our ideas - using tools like the design fridge and hotbox, etc.

 

Noah Rosenthal just completed a story: Iterate our HCW statements

2 years ago · Like

 

Noah Rosenthal just completed a story: Modify and synthesize brainstorming ideas

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

Here is another great tool, IDEO toolkit -- it is a PDF you can download:

https://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/

I also upload the PDF to our shared Research Resource folder on google drive

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

Did you answer the two questions on the white board from last Tuesday?

1. what am I / we afraid of?

2. self / group inventory -- what are our strengths? how are we uniquely positioned to make the greatest impact? this can be individual skills, unique talents / gifts and experience or other affiliations such as being northwestern students or perhaps part of other organizations or groups

answering these two questions (with as much honesty as you can muster) might help you in your journey to clear / reveal some unknown obstacles that are keeping you from reaching consensus and moving forward towards the next design phase

NOTE: answering these questions (and adding others you think are helpful -- perhaps you can come up with your own list) can repeated throughout the design process -- it is a form of checking in, one strategy for getting unstuck

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

One thing to add -- you should start thinking now about the "story" of your project -- every idea wants, needs, deserves, a narrative if you will. Think of your final presentation as a form of story telling -- you will share your journey from beginning to end, including initial challenge, research, defining the problem, reframing, discovery, exploration of solution, etc. each "chapter" of this is story will not have the same length per se, but each phase of the project should be share in some way to help the audience understand and really appreciate where you finally landed. so ... in preparation for this (rather than rushing at the end) start thinking about key character in your story, perhaps start a "Presentation" folder where you can start to put key things you want to share or at least use as part of your raw material as you build and refine your presentation -- these might include:

1) key research -- either an interesting interview or stats
2) personal notes -- it is not to late to start a project journal! I really encourage you to have a notebook where you can write and sketch by hand
3) photos -- either of your white boards or progress or perhaps your site visits
4) examples of cool presentations that inspire you -- these can be links to online articles or TED videos or anything you think is cool and compelling

we can start to talk about ideal length for final presentations so you can design to a timeframe -- less daunting

REMEMBER, this presentation should be fun! lively and engaging, even the best ideas can fall flat if the presentation doesn't engage people, how you tell the story of your idea, how you "sell" it is often just as important as the idea itself.

Please don't panic about this -- it is the perfect time to start thinking about how you will tell your story -- not something you need to put serious focus on right now, just something to keep in mind as you refine your ideas.

It might also help as a reverse design strategy -- perhaps you might ask yourself, which of these ideas makes the best story???

I am so proud of all of your progress and I can't wait to see you on Tuesday!

hope you had some fun outside this weekend too, beautiful weather!

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

looks like you have all made good progress -- it is great that you have a sense of your strengths and areas for growth and have developed tools to "combat" this, such as figuring out that voting using a number system is the best way to help you get consensus and move forward to the next step, that is huge! We have all shortcomings, so being aware of what they are and creating tools to deal with them is key to growth and progress, both personal and professional. YAY!!!

2 years ago · Like

Stand for Friday, Jul 8

Adam Joel

Stories Completed (2)

Specify users and places for our HCWs (4 tasks)

Start ideating (multimedia brainstorming?) (4 tasks)

Stories Started (4)

Define measures of success for HCWs (4 tasks)

Generate about five ideas that we will develop into mockups (4 tasks)

Modify and synthesize brainstorming ideas (4 tasks)

Iterate our HCW statements (4 tasks)

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
Being decisive & reaching consensus are our biggest blockers.
Alex & online consensus-building tools can help us.
Our other best tools are number-voting and moving forward to fail early & often

 

Peter Beer just completed a story: Start ideating (multimedia brainstorming?)

2 years ago · Like

 

Peter Beer just completed a story: Specify users and places for our HCWs

2 years ago · Like

Stand for Friday, Jul 1

Noah Rosenthal

Stories Completed (2)

Identify problem spaces and target specific ones (4 tasks)

Finish scheduled interviews (4 tasks)

Stories Started (1)

Start ideating (multimedia brainstorming?) (4 tasks)

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
Deciding which ideas we want to proceed with - coaches can help, other DFA can give good feedback, written resources (DFA guide, Rich's books, etc)

 

Noah Rosenthal just completed a story: Finish scheduled interviews

2 years ago · Like

 

Noah Rosenthal just completed a story: Identify problem spaces and target specific ones

2 years ago · Like

Richard Beckman

Gang,
Dovetailing with Rachel, let us know what we can do to help over the next few days! Sounds like you are looking to focus, but don't know how or are still lost a bit...is that correct? Let us know!
R&R

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

Also, what are some specific challenges you guys are having in the brainstorm? Are some in the group ready to narrow and focus while others want to keep gathering data?

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

Great recap Cody and team. Sounds like you are in need of a tool to help analyze your brainstorming sessions? Is there a way to vote with post it notes so that you can all pick top three key take aways from the session and then narrow from there? I will think about other tools too.

Would you like to have a google hangout with us over the holiday weekend to discuss the areas where the team could benefit from our help? Just let us know! I am around all weekend.

2 years ago · Like

Stand for Thursday, Jun 30

Cody Connelly

Stories Completed (5)

Identify common problems from observation/insight activity (4 tasks)

Find out how important the contractor-distributor relationship is. (4 tasks)

Finish initial research, reframe information in a way that'll lead us to a productive brainstorming session at the end of the week. (4 tasks)

Get data to better define the story of our contractors, homeowners/landlords, & reuse warehouses (4 tasks)

Find patterns in our wall of takeaways (4 tasks)

Stories Started (3)

Assess the most important values to our stakeholders (4 tasks)

Identify problem spaces and target specific ones (4 tasks)

Divide each of the Big 3 stakeholders into multiple personas with different wants & priorities (VISIUALIZATIONS) (4 tasks)

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
Being able to analyze our brainstorming session. (coaches can help)
Being open and helpful to each other during the brainstorming session. (coaches)

 

Cody Connelly just completed a story: Get data to better define the story of our contractors, homeowners/landlords, & reuse warehouses

2 years ago · Like

 

Cody Connelly just completed a story: Finish initial research, reframe information in a way that'll lead us to a productive brainstorming session at the end of the week.

2 years ago · Like

 

Cody Connelly just completed a story: Find out how important the contractor-distributor relationship is.

2 years ago · Like

 

Cody Connelly just completed a story: Identify common problems from observation/insight activity

2 years ago · Like

 

Peter Beer just completed a story: Find patterns in our wall of takeaways

2 years ago · Like

Stand for Wednesday, Jun 29

Noah Rosenthal

Stories Started (3)

Identify common problems from observation/insight activity (4 tasks)

Finish initial research, reframe information in a way that'll lead us to a productive brainstorming session at the end of the week. (4 tasks)

Complete stakeholder profiles and update visual aids based on information learned from interviews. (4 tasks)

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
Are we covering all that we've learned in our user profiles? We'll be able to tell.

Once we've put our thoughts into activities how do we pick a direction from there? Anne can help.

Drifting off into hypotheticals. We can help each other to check back into our research. "How much of this is based on our research?"

Stand for Tuesday, Jun 28

Noah Rosenthal

Stories Completed (2)

We want to know what the most common avenue(s) that people take to source their materials (4 tasks)

We are hoping to find out how and where homeowners get their building materials (4 tasks)

Stories Started (2)

Finish scheduled interviews (4 tasks)

Find out how important the contractor-distributor relationship is. (4 tasks)

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
Transitioning from research mode to synthesis mode. Coaches can help!

 

Noah Rosenthal just completed a story: We want to know what the most common avenue(s) that people take to source their materials

2 years ago · Like

 

Noah Rosenthal just completed a story: We are hoping to find out how and where homeowners get their building materials

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

What are other stakeholders?

LARGE SCALE impact: building management companies for multi-unit buildings, federal housing organizations like FHA, HUD, CHA? or what about facilities management for CPS or other city buildings? Could they also be considered potential stakeholder?

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine

A few questions to think about:

- what surprised you most over this past week of meeting with others? Stakeholders and partner organizations, etc?

- has the new information you now have made anyone think there is a need to reframe the problem?

- are we ready to narrow down our "how can we" statements

- what about accessibility issues? Sub groups within the stakeholders: ADA and socioeconomic / digital divide (lack of access to technology), will the project be accessible to as many groups as possible?

- do we need a time based schedule with goals and deliverables to give more focus and structure at this point?

- how is the group going? We know it can be a challenge to work in small groups under such a tight time frame on such an expansive topic! We hope you will feel comfortable sharing what's going well and what you want to work on! I see these are already in some comments below

- emotional check in: at this stage what are your hopes? Have they changed from the beginning? Gotten bigger or more narrow? What are your fears?

- there's more to share but I will leave at this for now, see everyone soon!

2 years ago · Like

Rachel Perrine joined the project

2 years ago · Like

Richard Beckman joined the project

2 years ago · Like

Retro for Monday, Jun 27

Cody Connelly

What are we doing well?
We are productive once we have a definitive task.
We are open to all opinions.
We discuss and are aware of our big picture processes.
We critic each other well.

What are we doing less well?
We are too worried about the direction of our work, so we don't actually make progress.

What measurable changes will we make to improve?
We can make a to-do list to give us more structure. We can timebox our direction decisions.

Stand for Monday, Jun 27

Emily Feng

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
- Dividing tasks among team members - design coaches can help

Stand for Friday, Jun 24

Peter Beer

Are we on track to complete our sprint goal?
Yes

What is our biggest confusion(s) or blocker(s)? Who or what might be able to help us?
-getting enough interviews conducted
-knowing when we have enough information (coaches can help)

Adam Joel joined the project

2 years ago · Like

Noah Rosenthal joined the project

2 years ago · Like

Emily Feng joined the project

2 years ago · Like