Presented by Kevin M. Hoffman.

  • We only retain 20% of what we hear. We retain 30% of what we see.
  • We retain 50% of what we hear and see (multimodal learning).
  • We retain 70% of what we discuss.
  • We retain 90% of what we make and manage!
  • Work that you do alone feels more productive because you’re making. Listening to someone describe something results in less retention.
  • Doing is better than Seeing is better than Hearing.
  • If you’re not going to collaborate, maybe don’t have a meeting.

Frameworks for Better Design Meetings

  1. Scale meetings to people’s needs. (Hearing)
  2. Employ the four roles that make meetings work. (Hearing)
  3. Use math to focus discussion. (Seeing)
  4. Sketch to reframe content and user experience strategy discussions. (Seeing)
  5. Plan for expansion and contraction. (Doing)
  6. Move deliverables into collaborative spaces. (Doing)

Meeting Roles

Facilitator

  • Must be entirely neutral.
  • Shouldn’t contribute their own ideas

Recorder

  • Take notes in a public way: on a whiteboard, etc.

Group Member

  • Must come in with clear goals in mind so they can be productive.
  • Keeps Facilitator and Recorder in check if they try to stear the discussion or record something incorrectly.

Leader

  • Selects attendees & roles.
  • Decides on meeting’s goals.
  • Should function as a group member during the meeting.

One Possible Technique

  • Print out on large paper all interfaces.
  • Answer three questions:
    1. What has to stay the same?
    2. What can be changed?
    3. What can be eliminated?
  • Use different colored Post-It notes to indicate which elements answer which questions.

Ellen Lupton:

Design is art that people can use.

Ten-Second Gut Check

  1. Show a series of visuals (websites, whatever) for 10 seconds each.
  2. Have everyone score each one from 1 to 5.
  3. Calculate the average and the standard deviation.
  4. Discuss the high scores, low scores, and large deviations.

Sketching

  • The Doodle Revolution by Sunni Brown
  • Can represent the concept behind a site much better and much quicker than a written document.

Divergent Thinking and Convergent Thinking

  • Open with divergent, close with convergent.
  • The more ideas generated at the beginning of the meeting, the more you have to come back to during the course of the project.

Sir Ken Robinson:

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.