[IxDA Discuss] Balancing brainstorm participants

[Joseph Selbie]

Mike,

This is one of the oldest problems in business! I think it comes down to the
session leader. Not only does the leader need to underline the importance of
hearing from everyone right at the beginning, the leader also needs to be
continuously aware of whether the quieter participants are saying anything
and, if not, directly ask them, or encourage them to give input throughout
the process.

I have had some success, when leading a session, in actually telling the
more talkative (usually senior) people to not say anything for segments of
the session. I try to do it with humor so that it isn't an awkward moment,
and if the session is long enough that the more talkative people know they
will have plenty of time to speak, they are usually OK with being quiet for
a while.

Getting the quieter folks "going" can also help. Once the quiet ones have
made some comments and suggestions they tend to feel more comfortable
speaking up. I often use a "list" technique to do this. I will say that I
just want to list everything out (on a particular subject e.g. tasks in a
workflow) and tell the group not to worry about order of importance, or
accuracy, or whether it overlaps with other things already said. I also
stress that all ideas are equal. That usually gets the quiet ones speaking
up.

If that doesn't work, I usually talk about how important minute detail is to
good interface design, and that it is essential that the folks who do day to
day work are often the best source of input since they get down into the
details while managers have to fly a little higher.

If that doesn't work I do breakout sessions and keep the quiet ones for
myself! Or you can break into groups but stay in the same room and give each
group a task -- sometimes the same task, sometimes all different -- and then
come back together and have the smaller groups report one by one.

Joseph Selbie
Founder, CEO Tristream
http://www.tristream.com

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Mike
Wood
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 10:11 AM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Balancing brainstorm participants

Hi Everyone,

Thanks so much for your help on my question regarding studio orgs, amazon is
rushing me your recommended resources. I have another question for which I
could use some pointers/resources, etc. How do you balance the conversation
when participating in a larger brainstorm or design meeting? How do you make
sure you benefit from quieter folks' opinions, stop the louder folks from
dominating the discussion, reduce interupting, etc. The only formal method
I have seen is passing the conch shell or the talking stick but I that seems
a bit limiting.

We are fortunate to have a moderator for our larger design discussions so we
have some flexibility on implementing solutions.

Look forward to your ideas.

Thanks!

Mike
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