Yesterday, instead of heading out for lunch, I attended a LUMA Meetup in our office.
Visit the LUMA Institute site.
The LUMA Institute got its name from the Latin for illuminate, i.e., to shed light on solving problems. LUMA is a collection of 36 techniques that can be applied to practice human-centered design. To date, Autodesk has trained over 1,000 employees in how to use these techniques to achieve desired outcomes. Autodesk even has trained 20 employees to be LUMA instructors. We have been taught how to teach people to fish instead of being handed a fish.
To give you a sense of what LUMA is about, I will list the methods. You can probably draw a tiny bit of insight from their names:
LOOKING
- Interviewing — gather information through direct dialog
- Fly-on-the-Wall Observation — conduct field research in an unobtrusive manner
- Contextual Inquiry — interview and observe people in their own environment
- Walk-a-Mile Immersion — build empathy for people through firsthand experience
- What's on Your Radar — plot items according to personal significance
- Buy a Feature — use artificial money to express trade-off decisions
- Build Your Own — express ideal solutions using symbolic elements
- Journaling — record personal experiences in words and pictures
- Think-Aloud Testing — narrate an experience while performing a given task
- Heuristic Review — conduct an audit based on ten rules of thumb for good design
- Critique — give and receive constructive feedback
- System Usability Scale — quantify feedback from subjective assessments of usability
UNDERSTANDING
- Stakeholder Mapping — diagram the network of people who have a stake in a given system
- Persona Profile — create an informed summary of the mindset, needs, and goals typically held by key stakeholders
- Experience Diagramming — map a person's journey through a set of circumstances or tasks
- Concept Mapping — depict relationships between concepts in a given topic area
- Affinity Clustering — sort items according to similarity
- Bull's-eye Diagramming — rank items in order of importance using a target
- Importance/Difficulty Matrix — plot items by relative importance and difficulty
- Visualize the Vote — poll collaborators to reveal preferences and opinions
- Problem Tree Analysis — explore the causes and effects of a particular issue
- Statement Starters — phrase problem statements that invite broad exploration
- Abstraction Laddering — reconsider a problem statement by broadening or narrowing its focus
- Rose, Thorn, Bud — identify things as positives, negative, or having potential
MAKING
- Thumbnail Sketching — create small drawings to quickly explore a variety of ideas
- Creative Matrix — spark new ideas at the intersections of distinct categories
- Round Robin — evolve ideas as they are passed from person to person
- Alternative Worlds — use different perspectives to help generate fresh ideas
- Storyboarding — use images to show the key elements and interactions of a new scenario
- Schematic Diagramming — outline the structure and essential components of a system
- Rough & Ready Prototyping — rapidly model the appearance and behavior of a new idea
- Appearance Modeling — model a new idea with emphasis on its visual styling
- Concept Poster — illustrate the main points of a new idea
- Video Scenario — show the attributes of a new concept in use
- Cover Story Mock-up — describe the successful future of a new idea
- Quick Reference Guide — summarize the key principles and elements of a proposed solution
This gives you a sense of the tools in our problem-solving quiver. I can't help but note how there are 12 in each category. I can just image a long ago meeting at the LUMA Institute where they had 12 for LOOKING, 12 for UNDERSTANDING, and only 11 for MAKING. I can hear the words now: "Quick, somebody think of another one for MAKING." :-) Symmetry is a beautiful thing.
In addition to adopting LUMA, Autodesk has its own process for innovation that involves what we call the Autodesk Innovation Genome.
To give you a sense of what the genome is about, I will list the steps. You can probably draw a tiny bit of insight from their names:
- Visualize the Innovation Environment
- Develop an Innovation Target
- Generate Innovation Ideas with the 7 Essential Innovation Questions
- Create Innovation Prioritization
- Initiate Innovation Project Execution
As a scientist, how do I reconcile this? I can't have two different mental models for accomplishing the same thing — innovation. Not to worry. IMHO, it should be possible to consider the steps from the Autodesk Innovation Genome as additional methods.
They can even be folded into the same LUMA categories:
LOOKING
- Interviewing
- Fly-on-the-Wall Observation
- Contextual Inquiry
- Walk-a-Mile Immersion
- What's on Your Radar
- Buy a Feature
- Build Your Own
- Journaling
- Think-Aloud Testing
- Heuristic Review
- Critique
- System Usability Scale
- Visualize the Innovation Environment
- Develop an Innovation Target
UNDERSTANDING
- Stakeholder Mapping
- Persona Profile
- Experience Diagramming
- Concept Mapping
- Affinity Clustering
- Bull's-eye Diagramming
- Importance/Difficulty Matrix
- Visualize the Vote
- Problem Tree Analysis
- Statement Starters
- Abstraction Laddering
- Rose, Thorn, Bud
- Generate Innovation Ideas with the 7 Essential Innovation Questions
- Create Innovation Prioritization
MAKING
- Thumbnail Sketching
- Creative Matrix
- Round Robin
- Alternative Worlds
- Storyboarding
- Schematic Diagramming
- Rough & Ready Prototyping
- Appearance Modeling
- Concept Poster
- Video Scenario
- Cover Story Mock-up
- Quick Reference Guide
- Initiate Innovation Project Execution
Ah-oh. I don't have the same number of available methods under each category. "Quick, somebody think of another one for MAKING." Symmetry was a beautiful thing.
Combining the genome and LUMA is possible because LUMA is a collection of methods, not a process. The process we use at Autodesk to develop software is the Agile Software Development process. LUMA methods and the steps from the Autodesk Innovation Genome can be applied within the scope of our development process as needed. For example:
- Use Walk-a-Mile Immersion to come up with user stories for the next sprint.
- Use Bull's-eye Diagramming to map a backlog of possible features to an upcoming series of sprints.
- Use a Cover Story Mock-up as a motivational tool to get developers to continue spending nights and weekends coding.
- Use the 7 Essential Innovation Questions to define features that solve old customer problems in new ways.
So what methods do you use to solve problems where you work? Let us know at [email protected].
Method acting is alive in the lab.