Slides from Leah Buley's FailCon Workshop on Good Design Faster

1. Hi, Failcon people.

2. Emphasis on User Experience
Lo-fi Methods, Tools, Tips & Tricks
Product & Service Design
Based in San Francisco
A bit about me
Leah Buley

4. Good Design Faster is an immersive workshop
that takes you from back-of-the-napkin sketching
to interactive prototyping in two short days.
Learn an agile, fast-paced approach that yields
surprisingly good results in surprisingly little time.
Transform the way you tackle designing for fluid
interactions, service design, and multi-channel
experiences.

5. My own story of failure

6. My own story of failure

7. Leah Buley,

8. Leah Buley,

9. An approach that...

10. 1. Sketch and explore ideas

11. 2. Bring lots of ideas together

12. 3. Share and iterate with the team

13. Bring lots of
ideas together
Our Process
PEOPLE!
Sketch and
explore ideas
Share & iterate
with the team

14. Bring lots of
ideas together
Our Process
PEOPLE!
Sketch and
explore ideas
Share & iterate
with the team

15. Rules of thumb for design sketching
Use markers and pens, not pencils
• our goal is fast rather than perfect
If you mess up, keep going
If you really mess up, grab a new page
Yellow marker
Gray marker
Sharpie markers

16. Sketching tools
Yellow marker
Fat
Regular
Small
Gray marker
Sharpie markers
Start here

17. Sketching tools
Yellow marker
Fat
Regular
Small
Gray marker
Sharpie markers
Start here
More attention

18. Sketching tools
Yellow marker
Fat
Regular
Small
Gray marker
Sharpie markers
Start here
More attention
Look at me!

19. Sketching tools
Yellow marker
Fat
Regular
Small
Gray marker
Sharpie markers
Start here
More attention
Depth:
Pop forward
Push back
Look at me!

20. ACTIVITY ONE:Cheat #3: line weight
Courtesy of Brandon Schauer

21. ACTIVITY ONE:Cheat #1: highlighting
Build-a-Bike
Courtesy of Rachel Glaves

22. ACTIVITY ONE:Cheat #2: shading / warm gray
Courtesy of Rachel Glaves

23. Helpful sketching patterns
Header
Tab
User
Picture
Photo
Video
Filler text
Pop-up
Module
Arrows
Larger ones can
communicate weight,
or act as labels
Side-scrolling Module
Drop Shadows
Communicate depth and
bring attention to
callouts or popup boxes
Calendar
Page curl
Mouse Cursor
Quietly indicates a
rollover state
Callouts
Can show alerts,
help, guidance or
sketch annotations

24. What to sketch when

25. Exploratory sketches
Wildly varied
Meaningful only to you
Low fidelity
Unsubtle

26. Refinement sketches
More realistic
Interpretable by others
Higher fidelity
Within a framework

27. ACTIVITY ONE:
1. Grab a sketching template
2. Fill in the boxes with 6 DIFFERENT ideas for the
same problem—a mobile app for Failcon.
3. If you get stuck, find your favorite sketch, and
then think of its OPPOSITE.
4. If you get stuck again, sketch something that
feels SOCIAL, or PERSONAL, or INFORMATIVE,
or SURPRISING.
INSTRUCTIONS
Exploratory Sketching | An Experiment
in 10 minutes

28. Bring lots of
ideas together
Our Process
PEOPLE!
Sketch and
explore ideas
Share & iterate
with the team

29. Enter Sketchboards

30. How to make a sketchboard

31. In this case, size matters

32. The structure can change
(use stickies to keep it flexible)

33. Include anything that drives your thinking

35. A healthy sketchboard has depth and breadth

37. Bring lots of
ideas together
Our Process
PEOPLE!
Sketch and
explore ideas
Share & iterate
with the team

38. How?

39. How?

40. The goal

41. Tips for getting good feedback

42. ACTIVITY ONE:
1. Working quickly, add a stickie note to the
sketchboard for every question or concern
that you have
2. As a group, talk through the stickies, and
decide how to improve the design to address
issues raised
3. Re-sketch whatever is necessary
INSTRUCTIONS
How to run a black hat session
Try to limit to 20 minutes

43. It really works

44. I want to try this
on my marriage!”
Good Design Faster Attendee from Portland, OR Startup
“

45. There is a drastic difference in the way
stakeholders are getting involved and
it is really great. The only problem was
getting a war room.”
Good Design Faster Attendee from Consumer Reports
“

46. THE most effective method for
creating a shared understanding of the
end users experience, and for
identifying new opportunities for
improvement or change.”
Designer at ThoughtWorks
“

47. Bringing it all together

48. The 5-day sprint

49. Iterating sprints

50. Sketchboards are just a jumping off point
Front
Office
Back
Office
Customer
Action

52. Sketchboards: Discover Better + Faster UX Solutions
Brandon Schauer | http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000863.php
Leah Buley
leah@adaptivepath.com
Resources to get you started
Made possible by the brilliance of
Brandon Schauer
Rachel Glaves
Kate Rutter
Good Design Faster, Boston, Nov 2011
http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf
The User Experience Team of One (a book in the making)
http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com