group size of around 16 col-
laborators, divided into four
groups of four. In each session,
four of the participants were
remote workers, sometimes
working as a remote collec-
tive or sometimes as part of a
studio-based team. The ratio of
customers to co-workers was
always around 1: 1. Our expe-
riences with this group size
are supported by Lego’s find-
ings that suggest that groups
of around 12 to 15 are the
most productive, while groups
become unmanageable when
they exceed 16 participants.
Maintain a core group.
Throughout the sessions, we
maintained a core group of participants but allowed around
20 percent churn between each
session. We noticed a marked
development of skill, understanding, and team spirit over
the period.
Keep balance between numbers
and group dynamics. We found
that dividing the group into
small teams of four generally
worked well. But we noticed
that some teams became very
comfortable with each other
over time, reducing the overall
energy of the group (although
they could still be productive).
We reduced teams to two (a
pair of collaborators), which
successfully resolved this issue.
However, as a consequence we
found that there was an associated risk that if the collaborators didn’t click, their productivity and the quality of their
output diminished.
sit back and let the facilitator
do the work. The facilitator’s
role also seemed to drive the
solutions, making the team
members less accountable for
the session outcome. In sub-
sequent sessions, we removed
facilitators and encouraged the
teams to self-organize around
clear objectives with precise
time boundaries. The facilita-
tors then took a central role
more akin to roaming project
managers.
[ 2] Fronteer Strategy:
Co-Creation 5 Guiding
Principles; http://tinyurl.
com/c5rp7v/
May + June 2010
…about running the sessions
Keep the buzz. In the most
productive co-design teams,
collaborators got along and the
chemistry worked. Getting this
right makes the process easier
to manage, but we found no
magic formula. Instead we used
instinct and observation and
tinkered with the team membership if something seemed to
be going wrong.
We found that introducing
friendly competition between
teams and developing realistic
personas added a sense of purpose, energy, and flow to the
sessions. The small prizes that
were awarded to the winning
team ( Amazon.com vouchers)
added only a slight edge, as the
participants readily engaged
with (and enjoyed) the spirit
of competition. An “
X-factor”-style reveal of the winners
introduced positive tension
into the session that resulted in
each session ending on a high.
Collaborators reported that
the competition element of the
process was very positive. We
found it very important that
success criteria, or the rules of
judging, were clearly defined
throughout.
Keep it focused. We were ini-
tially reluctant to set tasks,
provide constraints, or share
information with our customer
collaborators as if they were
employees. But we quickly
learned to treat them as a proj-
ect team that not only needed
planning, support, and report-
ing throughout but that also
needed appropriate resources
and information. They also
needed to understand the
real project objectives and
the business and technology
constraints they were working
within.
Don’t overfacilitate. We initially
allocated a facilitator to each
team of four but found this
encouraged team members to
…about designing
with non-designers
Customers aren’t design professionals. We knew our group
were not designers, but we
found we easily slipped into
making unrealistic assumptions about what they would
bring to co-design sessions. We
had to relearn that our customers are not (necessarily) design
professionals and what they
bring of value is their inherent
customer-ness. This was something we wanted to keep and
encourage.
Keep it visual. We initially
designed sessions that were
based on discussion and debate.
In this sense communication
was primarily verbal and ideas
were largely represented by
text and system-like diagrams.
This, however, favored those
who were verbally skilled,
which tended to stilt the overall flow and energy of the session. We reformatted sessions,
making the primary medium of
communication visual rather
than verbal by using tasks that
encouraged visual representation (personas, ideas as pictures, and products/services as
storyboards). Not only did this
allow us to draw the most from