UXPA Boston 2018: Bringing CoCreation to Enterprise Context

Presented by Hilary Dwyer, Aaron Hatley, Tim Hicks, Yogesh Moorjani, Neha Raghuvanshi, Whitney Roan, Priya Shetye (LogMeIn)

• Medium article

What is co-creation?

• Joint creation of value between company and customer, along with designers and researchers on the team

Why? Some historical examples

• In 1990s, video games were eclipsing LEGO…
• Collaboration with MIT brought LEGO Mindstorm… interactive robots made with LEGO
  • Almost immediately, people created custom (unauthorized) code for robots
  • Management not expecting it… initial reaction was negative… ultimately opened up their codebase to customer collaboration
  • Now, LEGO encourages their fans to design new LEGO sets
• DHL (according to Forbes magazine) 6,000 co-creation engagement
  • 87% in customer satisfaction
  • 97% on-time delivery performance

Case 1: Customer empathy

• Increase empathy with customers among stakeholders
• Reflect on user needs, not just “what works for business”
• Co-design far more effective method than anything done before

Seeing thinking

• Artifacts represent what customers are thinking
• Stakeholders can see, not just hear

Messy process

• We don’t usually communicate the messy parts of design thinking
• Can see how ideas evolved from ideas to wireframes to mockups

Stories

• Lots of people had time with customers
• Collective voice + individual voices
• Everyone became an advocate

Excites customers

• Customers learned how designers struggle with thinking
• Customers felt ownership, inspiration when their ideas were heard, incorporated

Logistics: How to implement?

• Co-Design Quick Start Guide (PDF download)

When?

• At a generative stage
  • After determining what, at a high level, to build
  • Before relevant pieces of product are set

Where?

• In a space that “works”
  • Where you can record/livestream what happens

How?

• Keep asking questions, keep iterating on how
• Before the session…
  • Who facilitates?
  • Who are the participants?
    • What should their experience be like?
    • What will make them feel comfortable, etc.
• After the session…
  • Are we accomplishing our design needs?
  • What can we improve for next time?

Case 2: Add structure to blue-sky scenarios

• Too much freedom can be a problem: few secondary resources for references
• Need to discover unknown unknowns
• Co-design can be particularly helpful here
• Product Manager: “Seems intense. What if co-design fails?”
  • Alternative was laundry list of ideas from designers, then customer survey
  • First time, did both at the same time… could compare and convince wider team
• People had easier time visualizing solution than verbalizing
  • Designer sketched out users’ thoughts in real time
• Stakeholders all watched remotely (live)
  • They noted interesting stories, problems, solutions
• Ultimately, a shared understanding
  • Less ambiguity
  • Helped stakeholders rally around user needs
  • Connected blue-sky ideas to users’ reality
  • Led to features we may have overlooked
• Obviously, not a 1-to-1 mapping between user idea and ultimate design
  • Some ideas/asks are limited to that one user’s experience… some are generalizable to many

Spread through their organization

• Captured visuals, media from a session… shared with organization… captured imagination
  • Curiousity around seeing a new technique
  • Artifacts colorful, unique
  • “Aha” moment seeing customer doing the design
  • Ultimately, a CEO shout-out about co-design
• Initially: 3 month timeline, shared session media afterwards, remote had technical issues
• Now: done in 3 weeks, live watching, including remote

Case 3: Across functional silos

• Support website covers 15 LogMeIn products
• Teams don’t talk to each other
• Co-creation for personalized support website brought all the partners together
  • Listen across product teams
  • See topic through multiple lenses
  • Share data
  • Design components to serve many needs of larger group
• Challenging to…
  • align design with business outcome
  • avoid “private agendas”

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Build empathy
• Align teams
• Facilitate collaboration
• Lower resistance to change
  • Low-fi deliverables make them more open to iteration, feedback
• Amplifies other research methods
  • Don’t do this in a bubble!
  • Pre-testing to narrow down scope
  • Post-testing to validate with larger audiences

Cons

• Time-consuming
  • Logistics, plus creating content to present
• Users may not be able to come up with solutions
• Users are not always right
  • Designers still necessary to translate their input into actionable direction
• People show up with pre-conceived ideas about what final outcome should be… need to manage for compromise

Tips & Tricks

• Ideal for large revamps (not small features)… keep design at high level!
• Remote works!
• When you start seeing patterns, start from there (not from scratch every time)