To wrap up the 2024 series, we invited the community to an interactive workshop on iterative product development, where diverse teams came together to solve challenges from everyday product work. The event emphasized inclusivity, bringing participants from different backgrounds to exchange insights and strategies for creating products that serve a wide range of users.
What happened:
Collaboration and co-creation: Participants worked in mixed groups to explore real product challenges and share perspectives across roles and industries.
Inclusive focus: The workshop highlighted the value of diverse viewpoints in developing solutions that are meaningful and sustainable.
Energy in the room: Conversations flowed easily, fuelled by coffee, snacks, and a shared drive to improve how we build products together.
Key takeaways:
Avoid jumping to solutions too quickly — Spend time understanding the problem first.
Collaboration across diverse roles is crucial for strong and innovative outcomes.
Systems thinking enhances product development by connecting individual solutions to the bigger picture
Why it mattered:
This closing event of 2024 was all about collaboration, inclusion, and innovation, and the energy and insights from participants were truly inspiring. The discussions sparked during this session will continue into 2025, where we look forward to welcoming both familiar and new faces to the Build to Last community.
Time and date:
Tuesday, 03 Dec 2024
Inventas office @FactoryTøyen
Venue:
Purpose of the workshop
The workshop aimed to simulate real-world product development scenarios, focusing on solving a societal challenge with inclusion and iteration at the forefront. Through cross-functional teamwork, participants tackled various aspects of the problem—from research to ideation and implementation—showcasing how diverse perspectives and systems thinking drive innovation.
The participants were organized into four teams, each assigned a specific focus area. Their tasks were as follows:
Assembling the right team:
Define the essential skills, experiences, and values needed for a product team that can address the challenge.
Understanding the user & problem space:
Identify the target users and the core social/environmental issues being addressed.Ideation & inclusive concept development:
Generate initial product ideas that address the problem, with a focus on inclusivity and feasibility.Iterative design thinking:
Develop a rough prototype or conceptual sketch of one of the ideas, focusing on iterative improvement and inclusivity.
The Concept Poster method
The Concept Poster technique is a collaborative tool designed to encourage structured thinking and effective communication within teams. Each team created posters summarizing their research, ideas, or solutions, fostering iterative discussions and cross-team alignment. This visual method highlights key points, captures feedback, and ensures that all voices are heard, making it ideal for tackling complex problems.
Benefits of the Concept Poster method include:
Clarity in presenting ideas visually and concisely.
A structured yet flexible approach for iteration.
Enhanced collaboration by encouraging knowledge sharing and alignment.
The outcome
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Team 4
Tips for your
day-to-day work
Ask the right questions early: Start projects by defining clear goals and exploring what you don’t know to reduce blind spots. Ways to help you doing this could be:
Problem statement canvas: Define the core problem, affected users, and success criteria before starting ideation.
Schedule a kickoff session with your team to brainstorm and prioritize key research questions.
Use surveys, interviews, or user shadowing to collect insights early.
Collaborate across functions: Seek out diverse opinions, skills, and experiences to enrich your projects and overcome biases.
Team map: Ensure diverse roles and perspectives are represented, and establish a clear communication plan using tools like Miro or Trello.
Set up regular cross-functional syncs to exchange ideas and align on project goals.
Rotate leadership for smaller tasks to give all voices equal weight.
Iterate with intent: Focus on small, testable steps to refine your product and involve user feedback at every stage.
Build-measure-learn loop: prototype quickly, gather user feedback, and refine incrementally.
After each iteration, conduct short retrospectives to identify what worked, what didn’t, and what to adjust next.
Use lightweight prototyping tools like Figma or paper sketches to iterate faster.
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