Some thoughts from our User Experience & Design away day..
So I hosted an away day at the BBC for the entire User Experience & Design teams + a few extra's. About 160 people in all. We had it at the Magic Circle, which I thought was quite appropriate - more and more User Experience seems to one part magic to two parts science; wrapped in artistry and a bit of luck.
I went 1st and ranted on my favorite points lately:
1 - The fact that the BBC needs to sort out its digital content strategy.
2 - The fact that we (the BBC) have no real relationship as a brand with audiences in the post CBBC pre BBC News demographic (that's 11-24 for those of you who cares).
3 - A thing I call the public service platform, where I think the BBC should re-order a bunch of its digital works/technology/services to provide platforms for public & private organizations, including startups, to build businesses on top of its digital services.
You'll here a bunch more about the latter one as these three feed most of what I'm thinking about for us for the next year.
We had two external thinkers Mat Hunter, from Ideo (see photo) who was great, and Clive Grinyer from Cisco (formerly from Orange). We talked a lot about the evolution of product & service development into design, a bit about how user centered design & a touch of naivety place designers (in the broadest sense of things) in a great place to design and develop products. In essence, our disconnection from business or technology limitations makes us focus 1st on what the audience wants, 2nd on how they will use it - then we manage back the technical and business issues from there.
Interestingly we talked a lot about the issues facing the BBC, one of the topics I sent people away to think about was "How can we make the BBC the most creative place to work? - which isnt' it now?"
- most of what we got back was the usual (though likely truer at the current bbc) more training, more tools, more time to be creative, more people...
But most interesting to me was that we heard, from people on the periphery of my team; more leadership, more clear decision making (they actually said benevolent dictatorships!) and in private afterwards someone said to me, they want more people like me ! While flattered I feel like there's something here in general. People want a leader who makes decisions, quick, concise, and effective ones. They want clarity of purpose, and they want to be given the time, space & resources to get on with executing that vision.
UX&D is very empowered these days - bit of a change management infection starting to spread... - I hope.
