Circulation of design in the team

Is a design game to prevent burnout, team fatigue and find interesting product ideas. As a result of the cycle, you will have up to 10 concepts on a given topic in an hour and a half.

Problem

In a product design team that has been working on one large project for a long time and sees the same screens every day, designers can burn out, get tired of their tasks, and lose motivation.

The likelihood increases if the team is working on a new project that has not yet seen the light of day. Constantly tweaking and looking for better solutions with zero audience feedback over time can lead to unwillingness to see more and work on your custom scripts.

A designer wants to hear feedback, see how users interact with his interface, so the risks in a large, protracted project increase greatly.

This situation happened with several designers in our team and we needed to somehow solve this problem.

Finding a solution

In my opinion, the most obvious solution in such a situation is to periodically distract from your scripts.

You can draw dribble shots once a week or launch your own small product. It would seem that this is the solution.

But just drawing shots is rather boring, and try, on the verge of creative burnout, to force yourself to draw on an abstract topic.

Launching your own product, even a small one, is difficult, not everyone wants and can. There is also a risk to drive yourself up and burn out completely.

Ideally, we needed a solution that would simultaneously allow us to:

• Get distracted from your screens, draw on an abstract topic
• Find interesting ideas that can be used in our product
• Have fun, laugh, have a great time with the whole team

Decision

A design game that the whole team gathers for once every 2 weeks

• A topic is selected on which concepts will be drawn
• Players draw one screen at a time for 15 minutes
• Then they take another player s concept and refine it within 5 minutes
• Then they hide the layout that was being finalized and go to the layout of the next player

This goes a whole circle, after which you can see the results.

A game

Training

• Prepare the project in which the game will take place

You can prepare it yourself, or use mine, which details all the rules and prepared pages for players.

• Come up with a cycle theme to draw concepts on
• Gather at a round table … in Zoom e
• Choose a leader who will keep track of the time and give commands

Start

• All players visit the pages with their name
• The presenter marks 15 minutes
• Players begin to draw concepts about the cycle
• After the time expires, the leader stops the first move

Continuation

• The host gives the command, all players go to the page below
• Leader marks 5 minutes
• Players copy the screen drawn by the previous player and modify it
• When the time expires, all players hide the previous screen (which they were finalizing)
• The host gives the command, all players go to the page below

And so in a circle.

the end

When the players are on their pages again, the game is over.

Results of the game

All together we go to the players pages, open the screens and see how the concept has changed throughout the entire circle.

Laughing, highlighting good solutions and interesting ideas.

Profit

Concepts

As a result of the cycle, you will have up to 10 concepts on a given topic in an hour and a half

Yes, they will be far from ideal in terms of UI, but at this stage it doesn t matter.

The next step is to take something good from each concept, correct the visual and get one good concept.

In the classic brainstorm format, in an hour you will have only a list of ideas on the board that have yet to be drawn.

Emotions

The most interesting and fun part of the game is summarizing. Some concepts may change so that in the last iteration the author does not recognize his interface.

Outcome

Your team had fun and had a good time, distracted from routine tasks, the risk of fatigue and burnout is lower.

Your product has received up to 10 concepts, which can now be turned into one good one.

Important notes

• If the goal of the cycle is to get more elaborate concepts, then it is worth increasing the timings + at the beginning of the game give 20-25 minutes to search for references
• The cycle should remain a useful creative entertainment, and not an obligatory event. Conduct it only when all participants really want it.