[IxDA Discuss] Balancing brainstorm participants

[katie at firstthought.com]

I find that starting by giving everyone a marker and 2 large sheets of
post-it paper (the kind designed for use on flip charts) and asking
everyone to come up with an idea each and then hanging them around on the
wall is a good start. Sometimes, I'll then go on to have everyone add to
each of the ideas - also in writing and on smaller post it notes. (I
usually number the original sheets and the annotations just to provide a
way of keeping track if that becomes necessary)

I find that once you have a starting set of thoughts, it's much easier to
get the conversation balanced...people tend to want to explain their ideas
and you can always pull them back to an idea or push a participant to
explain or challenge a quiet person to comment on someone else's idea or
whatever...and it also provides "building blocks" -- what happens if you
use X part of this idea with Y part of that idea.

And at that point, I usually take over doing the writing and making sure
that everyone speaks if they have something to say. 

The distillation of all of it into a few finely-honed ideas is also usually
pretty obvious -- sheets get stuck to one another and scribbled on, etc. 

Katie

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Joseph Selbie jselbie at tristream.com
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:35:45 -0700
To: mjwood at gmail.com, discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Balancing brainstorm participants


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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