How do you communicate and share the results and learnings of your design experiments with others?

Before communicating the study results and insights, here are 3 things to be mindful of: 1. Your stakeholders are likely not design team members, so the language, depth and narrative should be appropriate. Your intent is to communicate the insights and drive action, it's not about showing off your expertise. 2. Be aware of stakeholder perceptions and biases, and use data and storytelling to negate or confirm them. 3. There is no point in providing insights if you can't articulate clearly on the subset of insights that will bring in the most impact. Pick specific ones that can drive the KPIs that stakeholders care the most.

Before diving into experiments, it's essential to be clear about the problems you're tackling, the assumptions you're testing and the outcomes you're aiming for. Clearly define what success and failure look like, establish key performance indicators and ensure your experiments align with your overall goals.

At Koru UX Design, we start by setting clear, measurable goals for each design experiment. Sharing the objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) with our team and stakeholders ensures everyone understands what success looks like, making our findings more impactful and actionable.

"Setting the Stage for Success." Before diving into the experimentation pool, it's crucial to chart out your course clearly. Pinpoint the problems you aim to tackle, the hypotheses you're testing, and the results you're after. Determining what success and failure look like in your context is essential—define them upfront. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and other metrics are your navigational tools in this journey, enabling you to monitor progress and distill learnings effectively. Establishing a consensus on these goals and metrics ensures that your experimental endeavors are not just shots in the dark but are strategically aligned and communicable steps towards achieving your vision.

Block a regular time in the week/ fortnight to share only Eureka moments. This helps to reflect on one's work. Ideas shared is ideas sharpened. You will be surprised how much can be built on, if one spends focussed time with creative colleagues, just answering questions.

In our team, we make it a point to celebrate our successes and failures. For example, we organized a "Lessons Learned" lunch after a project where something didn't go as expected. The team gathered to discuss the work, focusing on what we discovered. We highlighted how these learnings could influence future projects, turning our focus to the positive aspects of the experience. This celebration of failure as a valuable teacher removes the stigma associated with making mistakes and reinforces the idea that every outcome is a step toward improvement.

Choosing the appropriate design experimentation methods, such as user research or A/B testing, depends on factors like fidelity, feedback type and scalability. Tailor your approach to align with your specific goals, resources and constraints. Use tools like spreadsheets or dashboards for effective documentation, analysis and visualization of data and insights.

For documentation, spreadsheets and collaborative platforms keep your team in sync. Dashboards and data visualization tools transform insights into compelling stories.

Prototyping: This involves creating mockups or early versions of your design idea. It's like building a rough draft of your cake before committing to the full recipe. This lets you test basic functionality and get initial user feedback. A/B Testing: This is where you compare two different versions of your design with real users. Imagine baking two cakes, one with a new ingredient you're unsure about. A/B testing lets you see which version performs better. Analytics: This is like measuring how well your cake turned out. Analytics tools track user behavior on your design to see if it's achieving your goals (e.g., easier navigation, higher engagement).

The right methods and tools ensure efficient execution and data collection. Opting for suitable methods and tools is crucial for effective experimentation and analysis.

Create a practice of sharing insights that eventually becomes easier to continue than stop. If you wait until you have something good to share, it takes too much willpower to continually remember to evaluate this on-the-fly every time. Instead, pick a day every week or two that you’ll share insights—good, bad, and ugly—with your stakeholders and users. For example: plan to share via email or Slack every Tuesday at 3pm. Set a calendar alert or an alarm. Soon, just like going to the gym every day, it’ll become a practice that’ll be automatic to your muscle memory.

Since design can and should be a participative process with key stakeholders involved, my experiences is that the best way of involving them is taking them on the full journey, from kick-off until proof of concept (with final users) and beyond. I think there's no better way to actually reducing meetings and updating the client on research findings than having them already in the research, design and test setup where they can fully immerse themselves in the challenge, understand the design process and listen directly to end-user-feedback. Best result is when the client expresses at the end: "This was amazing, thanks for taking me with you. Now everything is making sense."

In my team, after the completion of a quarter, we always conduct an After-Action Review (AAR). This structured debriefing session allows us to dissect the project's successes and failures in a detailed, systematic way. We discuss what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, and why there was a difference. Every team member, from designers to project managers, is encouraged to share their perspective. This collective reflection helps us identify actionable steps for improvement and ensures that the lessons learned are embedded in our future work.

Co-creating with users does not stop after one workshop. Continue to involve users throughout the entire process and show them the impact of their suggestions and your progress on them.

Elevate stakeholder and user involvement by establishing dynamic feedback loops. Instead of one-way communication, create interactive channels that facilitate ongoing conversations. Develop a dedicated platform or conduct regular sessions where stakeholders and users can provide real-time input during the design experiments. This iterative dialogue not only enhances collaboration but also ensures that their perspectives actively shape the evolving design. By embracing this two-way exchange, you transform stakeholders and users into true collaborators, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to the design process.

In the world of experimentation, there's always a dance with uncertainty and the chance of things not going as planned. But here's the twist: failures aren't dead ends; they're stepping stones for learning and getting better. To really make the most of it, celebrate not just the wins but also the lessons learned from the not-so-successful moments, share them with the team and turn them into a recipe for future success.

Acknowledge that experimentation entails uncertainty and the possibility of failure. Not all experiments will succeed, but failures provide opportunities for learning, improvement, and pivoting. Foster a culture that celebrates both successes and failures, appreciating efforts and insights regardless of outcomes. Share failures and learnings openly to benefit others and prevent repeated mistakes, nurturing a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Failed tests are equally (if not more) important than successful ones. Failed tests provide a great opportunity to rethink your initial hypothesis and solution. This can help you discover where you were wrong in your assumptions or audience study. Ideally, insightful failed tests contribute to future success by expanding your knowledge of your audience and/or highlighting your own personal biases.

Embracing failure as a stepping stone rather than a setback can revolutionize an SMB's approach to business. This mindset not only nurtures innovation but also builds a resilient and transparent company culture. How can small business founders effectively communicate the value of failed experiments to their teams and stakeholders to ensure continued support and enthusiasm for innovative endeavors?

Ensure your knowledge is shared, as people often misconstrue experiments as merely planting a flag and seeing if anyone salutes. It's crucial to establish an experimentation framework where rules & results are easily accessible. Consider using an opportunity solution tree to ensure your experiments are not repetitive and allow for deeper exploration.

After each project, whether it succeeded or didn't meet its objectives, we create a detailed case study. It highlights the project's goals, the experiments we conducted, the outcomes, and most importantly, the learnings. We focus on what worked, what didn't, and why. These case studies become a part of our knowledge repository, accessible to the entire organization. They serve as learning tools for current and future team members, helping them understand the practical application of design principles and the real-world impact of their decisions.

View experimentation as a continuous cycle of learning and action, not a one-time event. Use results and learnings to inform subsequent steps and actions, seeking feedback and improvement opportunities from stakeholders, users, and peers. By iterating and improving, refine experiments, enhance products/services, and achieve goals more effectively, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Iteration is the secret sauce to turning good ideas into great outcomes, particularly for SMBs where resources are precious and every improvement counts. This approach keeps your business agile and responsive to change. How can small business founders maintain momentum in their experimentation cycles without burning out their teams or resources?

The beauty of experimentation isn't the initial test, but the ever-evolving loop it sets in motion. Each experiment is a stepping stone, paving the way for the next iteration, informed by its predecessor's learnings.