// WORKSHOP · SOFIA · 2014 · WITH CHIARA ALBANESI
VDT: A review of the process
The second episode of Visual Design Thinking, run as a hands-on session with Chiara Albanesi in Sofia (hashtag #bgws14). It opens with a joke about a frustrating, unlocalised experience and then gets practical: ethnography and user research as the ground floor of any product, with Maslow's pyramid rebuilt starting from wifi.
The tips are the ones we kept repeating to clients: average users don't exist, so pick a niche; interviews happen between humans, so drop the pretence of objectivity; data helps you find the right questions to ask. The case study is a round of interviews for RIOS, an open brand, built on three prompts: explain it to an old friend at the bar, describe your partners in a few words, open the salesperson's suitcase and say what's inside. Then the room went to work: ten minutes to write five research questions for a public bike sharing service in Sofia. The last slides push teams to drop tech specs and write user stories. 63 slides, about 600 views on Slideshare.
The tips are the ones we kept repeating to clients: average users don't exist, so pick a niche; interviews happen between humans, so drop the pretence of objectivity; data helps you find the right questions to ask. The case study is a round of interviews for RIOS, an open brand, built on three prompts: explain it to an old friend at the bar, describe your partners in a few words, open the salesperson's suitcase and say what's inside. Then the room went to work: ten minutes to write five research questions for a public bike sharing service in Sofia. The last slides push teams to drop tech specs and write user stories. 63 slides, about 600 views on Slideshare.