The Thinkmill Method Playbook
A collection of resources to help Thinkmillers ship compelling products. These tools, ceremonies, and practices made a positive impact on design and development life at Thinkmill and have become lore. Some of these plays emerged from the Thinkmill hivemind, while others are adopted and/or modified to fit how we work.
Like all good open source things, these plays are not a prescription. Fork what you like and remix it to suit your unique needs.
The Plays
Activity Mapping
Activity mapping is a way to dynamically capture, and work on, product requirements in a format that’s more useful than a static document.
· 3 min readCore concepts
Core concepts are an expression of a project‘s underlying data model and relationships, translated into a written format that the team can build an aligned understanding on.
· 4 min readDACI
Created by Atlassian – DACI is a framework that helps delivery teams make effective and efficient group decisions.
· 1 min readDesign Ethnography
Adopted from the world of Anthropology, Design Ethnography is a research method that captures everyday life to discover interesting and unseen user experience opportunities.
· 3 min readFunctional wireframing
Functional wireframing documents how the various pages and interface elements of an app or website need to come together in order to support the user.
· 4 min readKickoff
The kickoff is a document creation ceremony that serves as a high-level contract between the business and delivery team that captures the goals of the project that helps to reveal hidden assumptions which may cause issues down the road.
· 4 min readLow-fidelity prototypes
Low-fidelity prototypes bring interactivity to functional wireframes to in order to test and better understand how a product or app needs to respond to user interaction.
· 2 min readMock API
Mock APIs imitate a real API by providing a realistic mock data response upon request. It’s useful during development and testing when live data is either unavailable or unreliable
· 3 min readPlayback
Playbacks are checkpoint updates to a wider audience than the core team. They share progress to garner feedback and ensure delivery aligns with expectations before proceeding further.
· 2 min readProcess mapping
Process mapping surfaces the movement of information and user interaction throughout a system in the form of a flowchart. It captures assumptions or current-state realities related to how the system works, and helps expedite alignment, design, and development,
· 2 min readRoute mapping
Route mapping is a process of co-designing a project‘s URL schema (and more) to define the UX and IA of a site or app.
· 1 min readSparring
Sparring is a way to get prompt and candid feedback on your work from others in your team. Use it to battle test your ideas by exposing them to differing points of view, and/or get clarity on gaps you can’t fill on your own.
· 4 min readUser journey mapping
User journey mapping captures the steps a user takes to complete a specific task in the form of a flowchart. It surfaces assumptions about how the team expects a user to interact with the product, and highlights pain points and areas for improvement.
· 3 min read
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