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DESIGN SWARMS®

Design Swarms®

Extreme Collaboration + Extreme Agility

 

What is Design Swarms?

The Design Swarms framework was first developed in 2014, and since then has grown to become a popular method that is used across a range of organizations to generate a large volume of breakthrough ideas at a very rapid speed and solve problems creatively by having multiple teams concurrently work on a theme or challenge.

The approach uses simple but rigorous process maps that depict design thinking techniques. This allows anyone even with no background in design to learn and practice creative problem-solving while solving an assigned challenge as part of a team.

Design Swarms™ bring together swarm behaviors and design thinking to increase creative velocity through collective design. Design Swarms™ have helped organizations to tap into the unused creativity of employees, partners, and customers.

Design Swarms was nominated for Smithsonian National Design Awards and was the process used by the winners of the Frontier Design Prize 2022.

 

Contact

➤ LOCATION

448 26th Ave East

Seattle WA 98112

☎ CONTACT

info@authentic.design
(206) 715-3133

Everything you ever wanted to know about Design Swarms….


What is the output of Design Swarms?

The output is an MVX (Minimum Viable Experience) which is made up of an Idea Pitch, a Customer Scenario, a Storyboard and a BXT (Business-Experience-Technology) validation.

The MVX is shared with the team and management in lively and fun presentations

The MVX can be tested with customers (typically with a remote testing platform)

The MVX acts an input for a Design Sprint or a Hackathon, providing directional guidance to an MVP


How long is a Design Swarms Workshop?

The typical length of a Design Swarms workshop is 1 or 2 days

Can scale down to 4 hours (with a focus on ideation)

Can scale up to 5 days (resulting in prototypes or an MVP)


Who participates in Design Swarms?

Product team members of all disciplines. No prerequisites required.

Customers: The process can also be used to enlist customers as partners in the design process. When you tap into the insight and creativity capacity of customers, it increases your velocity, improves product-market fit, and ensures you build what customers really need and are willing to pay for.


What are the benefits of Design Swarms?

Help to uncover and address the ‘why’ of an endeavor

Help balance building the right product & building the product right

Help discover unexpected opportunities and highlight blind spots

Help to rally the team around a product North Star

Help a team move together from Why > What > How

Can be used as a co-design platform to design with customers

Help team alignment by immersion into the real needs of customers

Discover knowledge and creativity resident within the team members

Highlight capabilities that each discipline and person on the team brings

Help the teams to work together to embrace ambiguity and think creatively

Have a meaningful conversation with or about stakeholders and customers 

Create a fun and safe cocoon within which teams can take creative risks