During Converge our goal is to take all of the ideas/concepts that were generated in the diverge phase and hone in on specific concepts that will be incorporated in the prototype that we will build in the next phase. Converging on ideas might involve picking existing concepts to move forward with, making changes to existing concepts or even combining concepts to form a new idea.
The team should look at all the concepts created in the diverge phase and use methods listed below to hone in on certain concepts and refine them further.
The team should also be familiar with Design Best Practices to aid decision making.
These are concepts that will be used to create the high fidelity mockups in the next phase.
This critique exercise is a way to get everyone's input in a short amount of time. At the end of the exercise you'll have a heat map of the ideas people find really interesting.
This critique exercise is more open and allows for a more detailed conversation. It gives the person that came up with the idea to add any remaining details or correct any wrong interpretations.
After visualization concepts are developed, the team needs to group the concepts by similar purposes. They could be grouped by
- business function
- persona
- time frame
- Type of analysis
- etc.
The groupings could potentially become the different views in the application. The team should discuss and weigh out the pros and cons of each group of views. Then decide which views the app should have, and what the workflow should be.
Card sorting helps in the categorizing ideas and concepts. It's useful for obtaining input on what concepts should be grouped together in a screen.
Views Summary (Required)
The purpose of this artifact is to provide a summary of the different views in the application and the personas who are the using them. The summaries have high level tasks and goals. This will provide paper trail for the design decisions in the process.
A user workflow chart adds more details to the personas to views mapping, by showing how the user navigates through the different views of the app.
Reviewing visualization concepts with the client allows the team to validate the usefulness and usability of their ideas. This also serves as a way to eliminate concepts that aren't effective and hone in on the most valuable concepts in the define phase. It is also a check point for the team to confirm whether they're on the right track or not.
The concepts don't need to be high fidelity for this review, but they should be presentable and organized in a meaningful way. Potential views and the mapping between personas and views can also be reviewed by the client for validation purpose.
As a group review all the Back burner ideas. Document the ones that are still applicable and throw away any that aren't.
- Silent critique
- 3 minute critique
- Group concepts into views (Required, but can happen in Prototype phase)
- Map personas to views (Required)
- User workflow
- Concept review with client (Required)
- Back burner board