Using the data or “quotes” gathered from eleven user interviews, I started an affinity map that shows the interviewees common responses; these are key trends. The idea is to visually map and discuss trends quickly with a team in a rapid, low cost way. I quickly realized a serious flaw with my approach. While a group of designers can leverage post-it notes for collaborative affinity mapping in an office, we need to find other nimble solutions when working remote.
How can we collaborate remotely on this?
I’ve been looking into virtual suites like Conceptboard, Lucidchart, Draft.io, Mural.co and Stormboard that enable me to collaborate with fellow designers as freely as possible from our homes in real-time. Below, you can see I have started populating the quotes from user interviews in Conceptboard. Due to its freedom, simplicity and intuitive interface, it’s my favorite option for collaboration thus far. I like how it allows for easy creation and sorting of virtual post-it notes for affinity mapping. While I haven’t explored all the features yet, it is supposed to allow for little sketches right on the screen and the ability to work live with other designers where we can talk as if we were on a zoom call while actively brainstorming in the same virtual space.
For one of my upcoming posts, I plan to host and record a remote brainstorming session with two talented designers that I worked with during my time at Fossil. We haven’t tried this before, so I expect it will be both humorous and enlightening to share with all of you. Aside from that, I know we are going to come up with some really good ideas for this cooking project.
To continue filling up buckets for this project’s research pool, I will gladly explore suggestions from last week’s social post like searching Reddit forums and launching a Facebook poll. The poll will happen a little later, so I can use it to gauge interest for the ideas we generate during the virtual brainstorm.
