UX JAM: drive design collaboration beyond your bubble
Creating a collaborative, inclusive session for everyone to participate in the ideation phase can have valuable benefits in the design process. Today, I want to share my experience in creating such sessions that can help your team.
TL;DR: UX JAM is a one-hour session that drives collaboration across the board. Start the session by introducing a specific product challenge. Work with a designer or PM close to the topic and have a brief documentation for all participants to understand. During the working session, encourage everyone to focus on ideating with a team rather than working on visuals. Jump to How to run UX JAM
A birth of UX JAM
As I worked through multiple products and challenges through my career, I knew I had to uncover the answer to two fundamental questions to create a better design process :
- “How can I challenge myself and others to look at product issues beyond the obvious?”
- “How can I guide people to ideate without any inhibition on the spot with others and understand design is more than ‘making things pretty’?”
In 2019 (pre-covid), I created a product challenge collaboration session and named it UX JAM, and it evolved into a virtual collab session after Covid. It started with three designers, and it grew organically. I ran 34 sessions touching 13 different products across three industries. Participants came from design, business, customer support, sales, and engineering.
By including every team member in the early design ideation process we managed to:
- Demystify design. Even people who have worked in product for a while tend to perceive the design scope as a visual output.
- Shake up rigid thinking through user empathy and collaboration with people outside of your own bubble to bring a fresh perspective.
UX challenge topic
How you find a session topic depends on your needs. Are you in a leadership position looking to cultivate open ideation across the board? If that’s your goal, then you can rotate problem topics across different teams at the organizational level to embrace diversity. The benefit of this approach is that a majority of participants are new to the topic. This way, people are likely to brainstorm without any preconceived notions, helping ideas flow freely, and allowing people to feel less limited.
You can use UX JAM at a team level to identify solutions quickly while engaging all disciplines within a team. The team will have multiple options to explore further after the session. I’ve observed numerous times team members learn from each other through this session and break through communication barriers.
Scouting participants
Utilize your visibility on other teams’ priorities and challenges. The easiest way to scout participants is to communicate with the product designer of each team. She/he engages her Product Lead (Manager) and discusses which topic they could benefit from this group ideation session. The designer or PM will invite their team members from other disciplines. As you host more sessions, returning participants will be a part of the diverse mix.
Also, whenever you have a chance to meet people or integrate new hires, mention UX JAM and explain to them what it is all about. Most people are interested in trying it out.
The tools you’ll need for a collab session:
Point to consider: When I first transitioned the UX Jam from in-person to a virtual setting, I used Figma. The use of a design tool can scare off non-designers; I know Figma is lovely and inclusive but participants who see the tool for the first time could be intimidated and the outcome of a session tends to be more visual-oriented.
The screen below demonstrates how you can structure your collaboration file:
How to run UX JAM
Kick-off and topic intro: 10–15 minutes
As a host, make sure everyone who is joining the session feels welcome. New participants might feel a bit nervous, so it’s your job to reassure them by stating something along the lines of, “This session is all about thinking and ideation. There is no right or wrong solution here. Also, you’re not required to know how to use design tools.”
Showing some examples of the previous session’s output is helpful to set expectations.
Assign the product designer or lead to introducing the challenge topic to the group, which gives opportunities to others to present and concisely provide context.
- Breakout room working session: 25–30 minutes
While the topic is being presented, you should start assigning participants to smaller groups. Here are conference call tools that offer this option:
Announce who belongs to which group and initiate the break-out room.
Tips: When you assign people to a group, make sure each group has a mix of different disciplines. If there are interns or fresh college grads, make sure to include someone more experienced in the group so that they can get more support and learn.
As a host, try to jump around each room and observe their process. You can provide some tips if they’re stuck.
2. Output share and brainstorm: 20–15m
Give break-out groups a time check when 5 minutes are remaining.
Have each group present their thinking and output. Encourage other members to comment on these lines: “I saw a great example from a product called XXX” “I love this quiz idea here. It would be even better if you add…” You can document these comments on the collaboration file for others to see and refer to in the future.
Remember this. All participants made the time to join your session. It’s key to make sure the session ends on time. Also at this stage of ideation, there is no right or wrong. It’s essential to set the tone of a session as open, inviting, and “let’s try out, fail, and explore together” attitude.
After the session, the team brought in the topic is likely to return to the session documentation to develop some ideas further and validate with their users. Make sure the archived files are easy to find.
After each session, you can reach out to new participants for feedback to make the ideation exercise easier and effective.
If you’re interested in implementing this method and want to brainstorm regarding the best approach, feel free to reach out to me via Linkedin.
