I am back at work after a couple of great days back helping with Leeds GovJam. (Check Leeds GovJam on Twitter.)

On the opening night I raised the most pertinent question for me:

What is the problem you are solving?

Know, don’t assume.

The teams embraced this and were out doing user research early on in the jam. Great to see people wanting to understand needs, rather than relying on their assumptions.

(All the slides from my opening night lightning talk are here – you’re more than welcome to have them.)

To help the teams focus on the last day I pulled together a quick and purposefully lean slide deck, to project onto the wall throughout the morning.

The slides might be a handy reminder for anyone in the early days of discovering the usefulness of their service so I am documenting them here.

  • By the end of the jam: Can you answer yes to all of these questions?

  • Why. Know the problem you are trying to solve – based on knowledge not assumptions. What difference will your service bring, what is the impact?

  • Who. Who is your service for? You’ve worked from personas to keep you focused.

  • Tested with real people. Did you test the prototype of your service with people from outside the building?

  • Iterated to make it better. Have you made changes to your service based on feedback from potential users to better meet their needs?

  • The unit of delivery is the team. Your team should work as a collective looking to meet user needs – not driven by individuals, egos, or agendas. Did you?

  • Show the thing, use your thing. Demonstrate your service. By the end the prototype of your service shouldn’t need an introduction. Does it tell its own story?

  • Keep it real, yo.

You can get the raw slides over on Google Drive.

If you find them useful, let me know!


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