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Wikipedia defines a symposium as “a drinking party (from Greek sympotein, ‘to drink together’)”, so I’d like to start by stating that, while I’m a big fan of drinking together, this is not what I’m referring to! What I’m referring to is the format, often taken in the academic world, of meeting to discuss and share ideas around a particular theme.

So, what does this have to do with user experience?

I work in a large FTSE 100 organisation, but regardless of size, as a UX person in an organisation one of the biggest headaches is sharing your work with everyone that feels they have a say in what you are doing (and that’s generally a long list). Sharing work is definitely not a bad thing – getting a broad spectrum of people giving you feedback gives you interesting and different perspectives.

However, were you to individually sit down with everyone that asked to see/feedback on what you are working on, you would spend 99.7% of your time taking people through the work you’ve been done, and the remaining 0.3% of your time evolving it and/or moving on to the next thing!

A technique that I’ve used, successfully, is to hold a symposium. We take over a large room for half a day, and stick all of our work on the walls. We then invite as wide an audience as possible to pop in at any stage during the symposium, and have a look at our work.

We present the various streams of work as areas on the wall, where deliverables are shown, and the person/people who worked on them are there to talk people through the posters, answer question and gather feedback. These ‘station’ type areas could be at a page level, or present the results of some research.

I believe that there are a number of advantages to this format:

You don’t have to battle with diaries.

You give people a 3 or 4 hour window to pop in, at their convenience. Trying to get a group together can be like herding cats. This avoids the stress involved!

You can show off your process in a visual and effective way.

As your design thinking evolves you can show how your sketches evolved into wireframes; and how those wireframes evolved into creatives. You can show your prototypes and the working pages that people can prod and poke and play with. I always make sure that the first set of posters recap the goal of the project, our personas and a summary of our research findings. This frames what we’re doing, why and how we came to our design choices.

It’s not a meeting.

The corporate environment loves meetings, but much of the time those meetings are ineffective. A symposium changes the format, and creates an environment that is different and more engaging. For a start, people are standing up and there’s no Powerpoint presentation!

People can go to each and every station if they choose, or just go to stations that they are interested in. By giving people this degree of choice/control, they become more engaged with the format.

It’s worth noting that you need to have someone at the door to give people a little help. People tend to come in a stand in a confused manner in the middle of the room without this. Numbering each station can also be a technique for combatting this! If there is a clear journey in what you are showing, then giving people a definite starting point and be very useful.

The value of it not being a meeting is that you can invite as many people as you like. There can be multiple people presenting on many areas of what you are designing, so you can share more in one go. It also means that you move away from one or two people dominating the conversation at a meeting. More people can have a conversation with the designer/UXer and give feedback.

The format is more relaxed, more informal and more enjoyable. There is room to be a bit playful and interactive. At our last one I projected a slide show showing the hundreds of iterations of design for 2 of our key pages. This was a nice little talking point, but also highlighted that a lot of work and effort had gone in to everything that was on show.

At our prototype station we set up a couple of PCs, connected to large TV screens. When people played with the prototype, others could watch (without being right on the persons shoulder). We also had an iPad with the prototype, so that we could show off our mobile capability, as well as it being something different for people to play with.

It’s not perfect though, there are a couple of things to watch out for! Firstly, the first time you run it, you may find that many of the senior people that you’d like to come along don’t. Either they can’t make the time or they don’t feel it worth coming to (they may feel, being so senior, that there should be a meeting arranged specifically for them). What will happen, in this case, is that they will hear about it being so successful and insist on it being run again. for them and their team. This format can suffer from its own success.

Secondly, it takes quite a bit of effort for you and your team. It takes a bit of preparation: preparing the posters, printing material and hanging everything on the wall. When it’s in progress it can be hard work. You do a lot of standing and a lot of talking!

Having said that, the results that I have had have been fantastic. It’s definitely worth the effort, and you and your team will feel great after it. You’ve talked through you thinking and designs with people, had some excellent feedback, and there is a real sense of personal and team accomplishment.

I believe that the format is also memorable and engaging. People remember what they saw, and in a more favourable way that if they had seen it at a meeting. This is very valuable when it comes to the, always tortuous, sign off process!

Another technique I’m looking at is to create and internal blog, posting new designs and gathering feedback that way – I’ll let you know how that goes.

I’d love to hear about any other methods that people use to share work, other than meetings!

Image credits:

Exhibition image courtesy of FrenchByte; image of the bored looking man courtesy of bigevil600.