Design Studio: Building Design Consensus Early in Your Process

Design reviews can result in conflicting lists of stakeholder feedback and out-of-scope ideas about what the design should be. Bruised egos, longer timelines, and higher budgets are often par for the course.

But Adam Connor knows a better way. And HECK YES, he’s going to tell us about it.

Adam builds design consensus naturally by running a Studio, which structures team brainstorming early in the process, then uses sketching, presentation, and critique activities to get everyone moving toward a shared vision. Before long, you’ll be running faster among a team of happy people—and you’ll all be building better products, too.

Prepare for your Design Studio

• Recruit your cross-functional team including key stakeholders
• Frame the problem using personas, scenarios, business goals, and design principles

Kickoff your Design Studio

• Break the group into pre-determined, well-balanced teams
• Review the logistics of the activity and assign each group a scenario and a persona

Start with individual contributions

• Be prepared to handle complaints of “I can’t draw!”
• Facilitate two rounds of individual sketching so users can generate many ideas and form their own conclusions

Collaborate to identify which ideas are most important

• Analyze ideas against the personas, scenarios, goals, and principles that frame the project
• Guide your team to distill those ideas into a single, shared vision