Get ready for an exciting finale in the third and final part of our remote discovery journey! Discover how our plan unfolded, dive into the process, learnings, and concepts that emerged within the given timeframe, and find out which ideas we’ll pursue and why.
If you’d like to catch up with the beginning of the story, check out Part 1 and Part 2 for the initial research and workshop preparation topics.
On the workshop
8 people, 2 teams, 2 facilitators, 2*2 hours, 128 ideas, 2 problem statements, 2(+1) concepts.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s behind these numbers 👀:
Following the agenda, the first part of the session was dedicated to creating a shared understanding of the problem statements. This allowed participants to make informed decisions and vote on the ones they’d like to work on. However, it turned out to be not enough time.
The two chosen problem statements - taking apex fit, importance and excitement criteria into consideration - became the following:
- (PERSONA) As a remote employee (MOTIVATION) I’m trying to live a healthy life (EXPECTED OUTCOME) so that I can keep a work-life balance & mental & physical health (PROBLEM). Still, instead of having more time to train, I stuck all day in front of my screen and didn’t leave the house (FEELING), which made me feel disconnected from my body.
- As a remote leader, I’m trying to hire the best people for my team and way of working so that I can create great products. However, it’s very difficult to filter out the remote-readiness of the applicants, which makes me feel inefficient and wastes time.
Learning n6: You need more time for empathising during the workshop. The fewer problem statements you focus on, the more in-depth understanding you can achieve. Considering the short timeframe, we should have started with fewer problems. Start with 3 or 4, maximum.
Turning Problems into Opportunities, using ‘How might we’ questions helped the teams start the ideation with a positive mindset. We divided the group into two teams based on preferences and started the ideation.
We decided to use the lotus blossom method for our collaborative brainstorming session, and the results were remarkable. Each team reached the 64 ideas fairly quickly. However, the final concepts were not part of these. Interestingly, in Team#1, despite having 64 ideas, none sparked enthusiasm. But just when things seemed bleak, Csenge, one of the participants, spontaneously came up with an idea that seemingly came from nowhere. Little did we realize it was a culmination of all the activities leading up to that moment.
Learning7: The process of concept generation is often non-linear and unpredictable. As facilitators, we can enhance it by incorporating energizers to stimulate creative thinking and structured brainstorming methods to generate numerous ideas. However, it’s important to note that the ultimate idea may emerge out of nowhere. In reality, it results from the collective inspiration derived from the various activities. Therefore, if an activity doesn’t unfold exactly as expected, don’t worry! The unexpected can lead to valuable and innovative ideas.
I forgot to mention that this happened already on the second day. We failed to finish the ideation on the first day because the empathising part was longer than planned, but we were moving forward! What was left for the second day was to figure out some details of the idea. So, we dedicated the time that we had left from the workshop to discuss the cornerstones of the two concepts that could be demonstrated in one of our internal meetings.
Yes, we just had time for quick and dirty prototyping… But you know what? It’s just enough for our current goal: to showcase the idea to the team. Most importantly, we need to create the same understanding within the team!
Learning n8: As you progress, make sure to visualize your concepts using paper, Miro, or any other tools. This powerful practice brings everyone onto the same page and enhances clarity.
Let’s see the two product concepts in more detail:
- Team#1 came up with a Pokemon go-inspired mobile app to encourage remote workers to get out of their homes daily,. Teams work together to collect puzzle pieces, which can be uniquely generated pictures or collectable emojis. By finding their assigned puzzle piece and contributing to the team puzzle, employees can earn rewards and compete in challenges to keep engagement high. What’s more, teams can shuffle, so the game also has a team-building aspect.
- Team#2 created 2 product concepts at the end.
- The first focuses on improving written asynchronous communication as a key skill that makes someone remote-ready. It would be a similar solution to Grammarly, but instead of supporting you in writing perfectly in English, it helps users to put their thoughts into writing better. Imagine it as an AI-powered Slack bot that offers you real-time improvement ideas based on your messages, such as using threads for better searchability and less noise, using bullet points for a more straightforward overview of the content, and so on.
- The second one focuses on uncovering the companies' informal structure and remote-readiness level by using Slack, Jira, Gmail and other tools used by the given company. It extracts the communication history and highlights useful information on a dashboard that helps leaders uncover how their team works remotely. In addition to having a company-wide network diagram, it also assesses the asynchronous communication level of each individual, similar to the solution described in point “a”.
Next steps
Gather feedback early on; it’s always a good next step! We’ve been doing it via multiple streams:
- We demoed the two concepts to the whole company to gather feedback and input on which idea we should or should not pursue further. First, because with internal #p23 projects, employee engagement is crucial, and second, because they are the target market for these products.
- We are validating the concepts' value propositions—for this, no coding is still necessary. We create a landing page backed by a social media campaign to drive traffic and measure interest—all with the help of AI.
Are we going to pursue any of these ideas? The answer is not yet known. However, we can make more informed decisions by conducting these low-effort validations. Our goal is to focus on projects that are worth investing our efforts in and allow Apex employees to develop themselves further. The journey of discovery does not end here, as research should be an ongoing process, regardless of the stage of your business.
Learning n9: If you are a software development agency like us, these workshops are great ways to teach product sense to employees. As a facilitator, it’s important to identify the teachable moments throughout the workshop, including the demos and post-work activities, to enhance the learning experience.
Wrapping up the discovery journey
During this journey, we uncovered opportunities in the remote work space and created testable concepts that answered real customer needs and that we could work internally.
Overall, this design challenge allowed developers to step outside their day-to-day roles and explore new and innovative ideas without many constraints. As a product person, I want to discover new AI-powered landing generator tools and train my creativity muscles.
We have gained valuable insights from this experience and have identified key learnings that will guide us in the following challenges, whether client projects or internal initiatives. Rest assured, there will be more exciting journeys ahead!
Learning n10: Just start doing it! While reading blog posts can provide valuable insights, they can never fully replicate the lessons learned through hands-on experience. Our learnings, summarised in this article, speak for themselves!
I hope our lessons can guide you as you venture into your own discovery process. We’d love to hear about your experiences!
