If Oprah started as CEO of your company tomorrow and initiated a homepage redesign, what influences would she bring? Or what if it was Steve Jobs instead?
This question forms the heart of an activity I like to run in project workshops that I call CEO redesigns.
I like to run this activity because it helps people to explore a range of different possibilities. There are always multiple solutions to a problem, and as Bill Buxton preaches, it’s important to get the right design before getting the design right.
If this is the first team activity in the workshop, start by forming the workshop group into teams. You might like to try this 5 minute approach to team forming.
Next, give each team two slips of paper, each with the name of prominent organisation, and the organisations founder.
Then give each team five minutes to discuss what they know about the founders and companies that are on their two slips of paper. Ask them to think about the differences between these people and how their distinct style has influenced and shaped the organisations they founded.
After this discussion hand out sheets of A3 paper, sharpies, and give 40 minutes for each team to create a homepage concept that reflects the qualities of each of their founders (so each team creates a total of two homepage concepts).
You could run this activity omitting the step of thinking from the perspective of specific founders, however I find this step useful for three reasons:
- instead of being immediately faced with a blank sheet of paper, this provides an intermediate step of focused thinking before sketching starts;
- it helps remove bias from the existing organisational culture and predetermined ideas. The people in your teams have probably been immersed for some time in their companies specific organisational culture. This has probably been limiting their perspective. It’s also possible that there have already been previous discussions about what they consider a solution to be. Rather than each team reinventing that same proverbial wheel this supports teams to open their minds to different ways of thinking; and
- finally, it doubles the number of concepts. If you ran this activity without the founders, it would only be reasonable to expect each team to come up with a single concept. Having two distinctive and unique founders to draw inspiration from, you’ll find that each team will easily produce two unique concepts.
After sketching is complete it’s probably a good time to take a short break. Once people have stretched their legs bring them back and have each team introduce the new ‘CEO’ and their homepage concept. Encourage people from other teams to voice their own ideas, what they found interesting and also to challenge the ideas within the concepts, and allow the presenting team to justify their decisions.
This discussion is where the real value comes from the activity. When planning time allow about 10 minutes for each concept to be discussed.
Practical tips
- During the drawing phase, give 10 minute time checks to let people know how much time has passed, and how much time is remaining.
- Jump start thinking with a sugar rush by handing out sweets.
- Give people sharpies (or similar) to draw with. Working in pencil or ball point is hard to see, and encourages people to either go into too fine a level of detail.
- Some people can find sketching intimidating. You can counter this by showing a prepared demonstration sketch that shows it’s OK to be messy. It also helps to run an easier warm up activity before this that builds energy and momentum into this activity.
- When teams are presenting homepage concepts, have each team present one idea, then move to the next team. I feel that having each team present only a single concept at a time prevents one concept being favored and receiving too much attention.
- From start to end, allow about 2.5 hours for this activity.
Some sample founders
It’s important to choose people (or companies) that are well recognised and ideally represent a canonical example some attribute (for example Steve Jobs for absolute attention to aesthetics and Walt Disney for a total sensory experience). I’m tempted to add George W. Buckley (3M) or Frank C. Mars (Mars, Incorporated) to this list but unfortunately I don’t think they would be well known enough for people to discuss. I’m also upset that women are greatly underrepresented in this list.
Feel free to use this list as a starting point if you’d like to run this activity:
- Bill Gates (Microsoft)
- Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
- Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google)
- Henry Ford (Ford Motors)
- Howard Schultz (Starbucks)
- Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com)
- Oprah Winfrey (Harpo Inc.)
- Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Group)
- Steve Jobs (Apple)
- Walt Disney (The Walk Disney Company)
If you try this activity, please let me know how it worked out for you!
Also, if you have any ideas for other influential people that could be used as inspiration for designs, please add a comment below :)
Tags: Workshops/Playshops
