LESSONS
LEARNED
Gone are the
days of the lone
• By including cross-functional
teams, you not only bring UX to the
strategy table, but you also invent a
new table for strategic ideation and
constructive dialogue [ 1].
• Because stakeholders helped
define and own the outcome, all
parties defend the innovation and
are more likely to sell it up their
organizational chains.
design hero who
comes in from
D-School with guns
blazing, introducing
Example of a Design Lab
Let’s take one example from Yahoo!
In April 2009, Yahoo’s sales organization refused to use a product that
the Yahoo! products organization
developed for third-party companies. Yahoo!’s CEO informed the
leaders of the sales and products
organizations that they needed to
align around a vision that ensured
the Yahoo! sales team would in fact
use the product. They had a year to
get it right.
Emotions ran high among constituents across organizations.
Leaders and team members in
these groups had not worked collaboratively before. They therefore
had significantly different visions
of what this new solution would be.
Having experienced the value of
Yahoo! Design Labs (YoDeLs) previously, members of the products
team requested that UX lead one to
solve this business problem.
This one-week event solved
problems that had existed between
organizations for over a year. It
collapsed the time required for all
parties to internalize goals, con-
straints, and options, and develop
a unified vision. After unifying
overall goals, the UX team pro-
duced designs that we validated
during the YoDeL. Once all stake-
holders recognized the need for a
new design as part of the larger
set of objectives during the design
lab, introducing the optimized
designs was simple. We reduced
decision time from months to a
week. The reality, though, was
that no other venue could likely
have solved the problems faced
by these teams. They did not
have months to debate options.
Big-D design
ideas in the hope
of transforming a
company.
Your Workshop Strategy—
Start with an Urgent Problem
When we talk to groups about
conducting design labs, teams
invariably ask how they can get
their organization to agree to
send employees to a several-day
May + June 2012
