Just in Time Experience Design

The Wavetable team spent seven months building a programme. Two weeks before launch we threw away seventy per cent of it and rebuilt.

It was horrible, and one of the best things we've ever done.

We'd been asked to build a skill development programme for the innovation team at a company you have definitely heard of. The first build was smart and well planned. We did the user interviews. We followed a solid process. We have done a lot of this.

But you know that feeling where part of you wants to talk yourself into it being fine, and underneath you know it isn't?

Too much explanation, not enough practice. The modules had got tangled. And the games we built were too clever by half.

We should have noticed earlier. I should have.

So two of us rebuilt the whole thing, working until the night before the first session. There was self-loathing, irritability, and real concern about burn rate - cash and human.

After one session of delivering it, we knew eighty per cent of what we needed. After three we were close. We could picture the people by then: their pacing, their goals, who they actually were.

Looking back at the first version, it was good. Good meaning we liked it. It wasn't right, meaning someone coming in cold couldn't use it.

You could reasonably read this as an argument for not planning. It isn't. The seven months weren't wasted - we'd never have known what to cut without them, and you can't playtest something that doesn't exist yet. The mistake was leaving it seven months before putting it in front of anyone.

User research only gets you so far. A real room of people gets you much further.

Just in time, but for experience design.

That programme is about to start cohort six. It's one of the best things we've made.

We've rebuilt it twice more since.