Task: Collect experiences
Exercise options
You can capture experiences however works for your team - sticky notes, a shared doc, voice memos. That said, we find it helpful to get everything into one place early. Our template below is designed for this step and makes it easier to spot patterns when you move into defining the problem.
Use Collection Template
User Experiences Collection Template
Examples of what to look for
Not everyone knows where Instagram documentation/logins live
Old captions get recycled in WordPress photos
Can't search many municipal agendas/minutes because software is terrible
Work that takes months disappears from organizational awareness
· · ·
So hard to create timelines from FOIA dumps of thousands of emails
I have to manually convert municipal data from PDFs/websites into spreadsheets
It's total chaos when coordinating long-form stories
· · ·
I want to be able to surface trends across state legislation
I want to automatically connect House bills to historical reporting / stories
I want to turn podcasts into newsletters/articles
I need an impact-tracking system for fundraising and reporting that helps me tell compelling stories to funders
· · ·
- Be specific - include who’s involved, where/when it happens, and what the impact is.
- Include both problems and opportunities - frustrations, slowdowns, but also exciting "what if" ideas.
- If someone gets stuck, encourage them to reflect on their previous week of work:
- When did they get frustrated? What were they trying to do? What got in the way?
- Where did they wish they had a magic wand to make something seemingly impossible, possible?
If a solution pops into your head, drop it into the separate Ideas Parking Lot section in the spreadsheet so you don’t lose it. After making note, pivot back to focus on describing the problem or opportunity in detail.