Intro

Tiffany works in a design agency based in London. Her responsibilities range from research and ideation to visual design. Because of the type of company she works in, she receives clients’ requests and collaborates closely with them to achieve successful outcomes. Pair design is part of her day-to-day workflow, and in this article, Tiffany shares her practices and provides tips and tricks on running good pair design sessions.

Structure

Tiffany is currently part of the UX team, where close collaboration with product owners and clients is critical. She says that before jumping to pair design practices, it’s critical to check if the people involved with the session have the skill sets, expertise and responsibilities to ensure open and effective collaboration. Besides that, aligning the expectations and outcomes between the people involved is another important step to ensure a successful pair design practice.

Pair design practice

To achieve a high quality of design, the pair design practice was introduced by the former Design Director in the company, and has since become the standard way of working.

Tiffany says that in her company a standard pair design session roughly follow 6 steps:

1. Before the session, the designer (whether UX or UI) will prepare a brief that includes the design goal, user problem and technical constraints, and ask the participants to review it.

2. At the beginning of the session, the participants share their understandings of the problem with each other for about 5 minutes. At this step, it’s crucial to align the expectations of the final outcome.

3. After reaching a common understanding, they check inspirations online for 15 minutes, and then share their findings with each other.

4. Based on the understanding and discovered inspirations, they spend 15 minutes on sketching, following up with 10 minutes of idea sharing and critique.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 if needed.

6. Finally, two designers will decide who is going to take the outcome and further refine the designs into either prototypes or visual mock-ups.

When to use pair design

Tiffany thinks that pair design is particularly suitable for projects still in an early stage or with complex features, where collaboration among people is needed and there is lots of room for explorative design activities.

Foster positive atmosphere

Tiffany says that to run a smooth pair design session, it’s important to formulate a positive loop to keep the discussion going. For example, when another person presents an idea, you first highlight the good part and then give suggestions on how to develop the strong point further. With this approach, you can formulate a positive atmosphere, and it’s easier to build up a constructive discussion.

Key takeaways

• Use pair design to uncover blind spots - it’s a great tool for the early stage of a project.

• Formulate a positive loop - always find good aspects of people’s ideas, create a positive atmosphere and build constructive discussions.