If the Design Process were a boy band, Feature Prioritization would never be the fan favorite with a breakout solo career. Prioritization isn’t sexy. It hurts to let go of the beloved features created during brainstorming. The decision-making design phase often involves negotiation and compromise in an uncomfortable social environment. Prioritization can be downright painful! If only you could recapture the enthusiasm and creative glow of brainstorming. Well, wish no longer! Design fairy godmothers Carolyn Chandler and Anna van Slee are here to transform this pumpkin into a stage coach. Strap in!

1. Download the app!
Stop Motion Studio
• Available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play
• Make sure you get the FREE version
• Published by Cateater, LLC.

3. Pain-Free Prioritization

4. Carolyn Chandler Anna van Slee@chanan @adventuringanna
Adventures in Experience Design
Activities for Beginners

5. Prioritization…
Why is it so damn HARD?

6. Features generation is a journey
through forests, trees, and weeds…

7. …and traffic pictures change.

8. Assumptions get made left and right.

9. People fall in love…
and get their hearts broken

10. Prioritization…
Why is it so damn IMPORTANT?

11. If it’s done badly you have a product
with holes.

12. What primary product does
Starbucks sell?

13. What experience does
Starbucks sell?

16. bad prioritization leads to:
frustration,
loss of trust, and
missed opportunities
For your product’s users…

17. Prioritization done well inspires love and trust

19. Agenda!
What are we going to accomplish today?
• Foundations for strategic design
• Intro to your case study
• Teamwork to generate feature ideas,
then prioritize together

20. FoundationsFollow the yellow brick road

21. Company Values
User Insights
Role Priorities
• Clarifying values
• Forming design principles
• Research
• User models (like personas)
• Business
• User
• Technology

22. Teams get frustrated if
they’re reacting all the time

23. What makes your team more strategic?
1. A thriving foundation of company values
and brand attributes

25. Design Principles
Brand-rooted guiding statements that help your
team make decisions about which features to
build, and how they work

26. Antoni Gaudi
Value: Harmony
The essential quality of a work of art is harmony. In sculptural
works, harmony derives from the light that gives it relief and
decorates it.
Principles on Light
• The amount of light should be just right, not too much, not
too little, since having too much or too little light can both
cause blindness […]
• 45 degrees is the angle that best defines bodies and shows
us the form.

28. What makes your team more strategic?
1. A thriving foundation of company values
and brand attributes
2. Insight into real problems, and user needs
and behaviors

30. BEGINNER BEN
Personal Information
Age: 19 years old
College student at Uni-
versity of Illinois, majoring
in Civil Engineering
Lives on campus in Cham-
paign during the school
year and spends summers
at home working
Ben uses:
About Ben
at age 12. Now he’s an outgoing, bright engineering student who gets good
grades at school. He knows he currently lacks the experience to get the job
experience now.
Goals
Study abroad in Copenhagan for a semester
Gain the experience that will help him start working immediately after com-
pleting his undergraduate degree
Frustrations
Ben is learning hard skills in his classes, but hasn’t been able to apply them to
any jobs or internships directly related to his area of interest.
in class, but most job sites focus on professional experience.
Activities
By night, he works part-time and occasionally attends on-campus workshops

31. Profile Comparisons

32. What makes your team more strategic?
1. A thriving foundation of company values
and brand attributes
2. Insight into real problems, and user needs
and behaviors
3. A focus on business vision/objectives,
maintaining an awareness of what’s
important, feasible and next

34. What makes your team more strategic?
1. A thriving foundation of company values
and brand attributes
2. Insight into real problems, and user needs
and behaviors
3. A focus on business vision/objectives,
maintaining an awareness of what’s
important, feasible and next
4. The ability to work with others to gain
this knowledge and make it part of
decision-making

35. Welcome to Happily Ever After
You’re hired! Imagine that you work at
Happily Ever After, an app developer
that’s focused on mobile movie-making.
We’re a small company of 50 people
including developers, visual designers,
user experience designers and business
stakeholders.

36. Stop
Motion
What is it?
Why do we care?

37. What is stop motion?
What is it?
• Stop motion is an animation technique that makes
inanimate objects appear as if they are moving.
• Essentially, stop motion is a series of still photos, in which
the animated object(s) are moved slightly between
pictures. When all the pictures are stitched together, it
creates the illusion of motion!
Why do we care?
• Technology has made animation both easier and more
available to non-professionals than ever before.
• There’s an amazing amount of extremely creative amateur

38. Your Challenge
Assess your company’s stop motion product
Generate features / ideas to improve it
Prioritize and prototype them

39. #shameless pug

40. This is our Methodology.
SPONGE SPARK SPLATTER SCULPT STORYTELL
Choose a design
challenge and
immerse in the
related context. What
do you want to make
better? For who?
Take insights from
Sponge. Define your
audience and their
needs. Generate the
solution idea you
want to design.
Brainstorm multiple
ideas (quantity over
quality). Explore
possible features
and content.
Form and refine
your solution with
user insights and
design strategy.
Express the
importance and
meaning of your
solution.

41. Whoa! Deja Vu…
Make stop-motion movies more accessible for parents with
8-to-10-year-old kids
• Making stop-motion movies can be
time-consuming (parents = busy!)
• Mobile UI can be confusing
• Stop-motion movie making can be
hard to understand
• How might we speed up the movie-
making process?
• How might we integrate instructions
or tutorials into the experience?
A mobile app for both iOS
and Android
A mini stop-motion
camera that you can
attach to your pet’s collar
that takes pics every 10
seconds
Create a retail chain of
workshops with deluxe
stop motion stations you
can rent by the hour
Whoa! Deja Vu…

42. Company Values
User Insights
Role Priorities
• Clarifying values
• Forming design principles
• Research
• User models (like personas)
• Business
• User
• Technology

43. Values&Principles
Without them, you’re the villain in the tale

45. The French

46. The British

47. In the 1970’s, Ann C Noble created the aroma wheel

48. Attributes
q Corporate
q Cutting-Edge
q Decisive
q Deliberate
q Detailed
q Dominating
q Educated
q Elitist
q Energetic
q Essential
q Ethical
q Exacting
q Exciting
q Exclusive
q Experienced
q Adaptable
q Adventurous
q Approachable
q Assertive
q Busy
q Candid
q Caring
q Commercial
q Communal
q Complex
q Concise
q Conservative
q Confident
q Confidential
q Conscientious
q Familial
q Fearless
q Fresh
q Friendly
q Fun
q Functional
q Giving
q Growing
q Heavy
q Honest
q Hopeful
q Humble
q Impactful
q Informed
q Innovative
q Inspiring
q Modern
q Nostalgic
q Open
q Organic
q Organized
q Outgoing
q Political
q Refined
q Refreshing
q Safe
q Self-aware
q Simplistic
q Spontaneous
q Stable
q Sterile
q Timeless
q Transparent
q Trusted
q Vibrant
q Warm
q Welcoming
q Youthful
ADD YOUR OWN:

49. Choose Your Attributes
Choose 3-5 words from our attribute
list that you think describe the site
you’re about to see…

52. Attributes for the case study are…
Empowering
Inspirational
Intuitive
Trustworthy

54. Explore Definitions
1. On a sticky note, individually write your
definition of the word “Empowering.”
2. Go around the table and discuss the
different definitions for it. What resonates
with everyone?

55. Empowering
The act of making something is cathartic and
magical. Kids don’t have a lot of power in their
lives, so the act of creation gives them rare total
control and an opportunity for growth.
• Let the user make as many of the key choices as possible.
• Balance this with the fact that choices can’t be
overwhelming.
• Make boring choices fade to the background and put fun
choices front and center.

56. Inspiring
The product should lead families to have and
express ideas that they would not have
otherwise.
• Delight families with features like special effects that
will push their movies and narratives to a level they
didn’t realize they could achieve.

57. Intuitive
Great design for kids is more than just easy to
use – it’s fun because it’s intuitive.
• Focus flow and functionality on the actual act of
making, instead of the how.
• Visuals are always better than copy – seeing is better
than reading – doing is better than listening.
• Learning by doing is always best.

58. Trustworthy
This is a safe environment for play and growth
that is both desirable to the child and
wholesome for the parent.
.
• Parents should feel confident about their kids playing
with this alone.
• This means kids won’t spend $400 in a few minutes,
that they won’t share a picture of themselves in the
bathtub, and that strangers will not see kids’ creations.

59. User Insights
No unimportant characters in this story…

60. Meet Kate McCallister.
Kate’s a super busy 40-year-old mother of five, and
a full-time, executive-level employee at a bank.
Goals
• Wholesome experiences for her children. They
love technology and are glued to their mobile
devices and TV.
• Co-play experiences that are engaging…for her.
Finally, her kids are old enough to play games
that aren’t totally juvenile and boring for her to
play.
Frustrations
• Time! As in, there’s never enough of it.
• Technology can be intimidating. Her kids are
getting old enough that sometimes they know
her iPhone better than she does… which scares
her, when she starts to think about safety and
privacy.

61. Meet Kevin McCallister.
Kevin is a very smart, energetic and creative 8-
year-old with a short attention span.
Goals
• FUN, like, as soon as possible. Kevin compares
every experience to his video games. How
instant is the gratification?!
• To make stuff that he can share (to impress,
really) his friends and family. He doesn’t get mail
or email. He can’t be on social media.
Frustrations
• Getting more of mom’s attention! With four
siblings to compete with, every second he
spends with his mom is precious.
• Nothing can happen fast enough for Kevin. He’s
a digital native who grew up taking instant
messaging and on-demand entertainment for
granted.

62. Usability Testing

63. Time to get sticky with it…
Problems
pink
• Places where you are
confused or frustrated
• Bad/unnecessary errors
• Situations that make you ask
“how do I…” too often or for
too long
• Barriers to features caused by
(mis)understanding
Assumptions/Emotions
yellow
• Unproven statements that
you’re making about the
audience
• Comments such as frustrations,
impressions, or other emotional
exclamations
Features
green
• Proposed fixes for
problems
• Proposed changes to
interactions/flows
• Addition of functionality
• Opportunities for a better
fit with design principles

64. Task #1 (10 minutes)
You’ve got a 10 minutes while dinner cooks
to play with your little boy. He’s got a couple
toys and other objects out on the dining
room table. Open the Stop Motion Studio
app and create a new stop action movie:
With at least 20 frames, and
using at least 2 objects
Problems
pink
Assumptions/Emotions
blue
Features (3-5 per person)
yellow

65. Task 2a (5 minutes)
When you are done making your stop
motion movie, give your video a title.
Task 2b (5 minutes)
Share your movie by emailing it to:
carolyn.ux@gmail.com; Set the resolution
to “Large – 540p” so that it will be small
enough to email.
Problems
pink
Assumptions/Emotions
blue
Features (3-5 per person)
yellow

66. Brainstorm-Up (10 minutes) to at least
20 feature ideas or changes
How might we increase
delight during movie creation?

67. Time for a Bathroom Break!
Put up your features and review other teams features
(copy good ones) - We’ll start back up at 12:10

68. Time to do an about-face…

69. Evaluation criteria
• What is important to the users?
• What is important to the business?
Feasibility considerations:
• App size needs to be under 50 MB
• Must remain COPPA compliant
(related: we don’t want to add user accounts)
• A small lean dev team means no features should be specifically iOS or
Android (must work for both) so there’s less development redundancy

70. The Feasibility Four
FEASIBILITY
IMPORTANCE
0 10
0
10
DO FIRSTDO LATER
CONSIDERDON’T BOTHER

71. Map Your Features!

72. Prioritization Personas

73. Meet Tess McGill.
Tess is Chief Financial Officer of Happily Ever
After. She’s run several profitable companies in
different areas of new media.
Goals
• Monetizing the company’s products
• Making sure operating, development, and
marketing costs do not exceed revenue
• She’s looking for “big bang” features that will
make the company’s products stand out from
the competition’s, and attract partnerships
Frustrations
• Tess finds that the team falls in love with
features that are just not viable for the
business. She doesn’t want to squash
creative thought, but wants people to think
realistically.

74. Meet Dade Override.
Dade is a 28 year old developer specializing in
mobile games and media creation.
Goals
• Become a more senior developer, both through
learning new technologies and become a leader/
manager in the tech group
• Create something challenging, but also easy for
the team to maintain and scale.
Frustrations
• Dade is frustrated with the amount of time spent
thinking and planning upfront. He wants to get in
and start building as soon as possible.

75. Meet Jackson Pollock.
Jackson is an experience designer who has
specialized in working on products for kids.
Goals
• Make sure user needs are being taken into account
with both features chosen and the usability of the
design - including features that delight and
surprise users.
• Make an interface that’s playful, and that use
symbols over text to help younger children use the
app more readily.
Frustrations
• Jackson feels like some business-related features
have negative impact on user experience or
privacy and safety.

76. Pick your Persona!

77. Impassioned Exercise: Desert Island
• Focus on the features “Do First” and “Do Later” only
(take a pic before you change)
• Re-evaluate all these features through the lens of your
prioritization persona
• Pick the Top 3 that you think are the most important
based on your persona
• Prep a quick pitch - 30-60 seconds per pick
• Put your mark on those sticky notes as you pitch
(B, T, D)

78. Take off your persona hat
and shake it off

79. Visualization
Seeing is believing

83. Flow shapes are linear and can be linked together in a se-
quence. They include dot, line, angle, arc, spiral, and loop.
Closed shapes feel more like solid objects. They in-
clude oval, eye, triangle, rectangle, house, and cloud.
Using just these shapes, draw:
A watch
Your neighbor’s face

85. Now You See It….
How has being able to visualize features
affected the way you perceive their value?
When doing this with your team, VOTE for
your favorite feature visualizations by adding a
star next to each.
Why did you pick the feature that you picked?
How did sketching/visualization affect that
choice?

86. Pay attention when it doesn’t feel right

87. Summary of Take-Aways
Prioritization is painful but
important
Strategic foundations
• Company Values
• User Insights
• Role Awareness
Prioritization Process
• Generate feature ideas for
business AND users
• Create prioritization criteria
(business and user-based)
• Map features by importance
and feasibility
• Filter through role concerns
• Map again by business and
user benefits
• Test through collaborative
visualization

88. Carolyn Chandler Anna van Slee
@chanan @adventuringanna
And they all lived…
Adventures in Experience Design
Activities for Beginners