Challenge: Bring a venerated architecture firm into the 21st century by making its decades of accumulated knowledge accessible to everyone in the company.
Approach: Uncover cultural and technological barriers to sharing knowledge through broad qualitative research, then use design sprints to quickly articulate a vision for the future; finally, create a multidisciplinary roadmap for how to realize that vision.
10 weeks
6 weeks research
3 weeks design sprints
1 week final analysis & artifact creation
5-person team
2 Designers
1 Technologist
1 Change Management Expert
1 Project Manager
Key Responsibilities
Plan and drive primary user research
Co-lead design sprints
Generate all research-related assets
Edit and revise final artifact
1. Research
For the uninitiated, architecture is a complex industry with an intensely competitive culture. Having a nuanced understanding of that environment was a vital first step before we could generate meaningful solutions that would help shift that culture toward one of transparency and collaboration.
From day one, we hit the ground running. I lead dozens of interviews with employees of all disciplines within the company, across geographic markets, from interns to managing partners. I ran workshops to allow for group discussion and brainstorming, and distributed a survey that gave us input from another 450 employees.
From this mountain of qualitative and quantitative data, I created user personas and distilled additional key insights and themes that drove our solution approach as we moved into design sprints.
2. Design Sprints
Equipped with a stronger understanding of the problem space, we moved into rapid solution iteration. Using the Google Ventures Design Sprint approach, my colleague and I moved through three rounds of prototyping in three weeks, ending each week with user testing sessions that helped shape our priorities for the next week’s iteration.
This method allowed us to quickly shift from generative research to a testable design. The concepts I generated in these sprints became a key part of the future state vision of the company.
3. Roadmap
Finally, with months of research and design exploration under our belts, we assembled the final deliverable: a book detailing the future state vision and the steps needed to achieve it both technologically and organizationally.
This book would serve as an internal marketing tool for getting partners across the firm excited for the future, while also providing important guidance for what it would take to get there.