Gap❗
There is lack of evidence on tools facilitating cross-functional innovation, alignment between business & UX, and AI’s impact on sensemaking of data
How we did it ↓
Microsoft
Interviews
Literature Review
Process Sketching
Thematic Analysis
In-Progress
Project Overview
Many early-stage tech innovations fail when teams lack evidence to understand user problems. Misaligned interpretations of data can lead to costly, low-impact solutions. To address this, Microsoft Research and my team at UC Santa Cruz have been exploring this design space.
My Role
Product Designer
Methods
Affinity Mapping, Process Sketching, Thematic Analysis, Prototyping
Tools
Miro, FigJam, Figma, Zoom
Collaborators
Anita Rani
Aashi Roy
Allison Tanaka
Meet the team ↓
Innovation rarely happens in isolation, but the truth is, it is messy, and not much is known about how each role actually works in this phase or how they make decisions
Ideal Case: IDEO's DVF Framework
Reality
How might we better align business and UX teams in early-stage innovation through shared data, tools, and AI to improve cross-functional collaboration?
Where we started ↓
What's Out There
While many tools foster open-ended creativity and collaboration, none are specifically designed to help UX & business teams work together to assess viability and align early
40
papers
We wanted to see the current work out there including innovation approaches, artifacts, frameworks, methods, tools by role, and by company contexts
18
semi-structured interviews
Our major opportunity to get granular details about stakeholders’ workflows, collaboration, challenges, software tools in semi-structured interviews on Zoom.
Moving participant quotes to a sheet for coding ↓
Drawing insights ↓
Insights to Design
UX and business development teams often interpret data through different lenses. A shared sensemaking space can help them triangulate insights, align decisions, and build a more holistic understanding of user and business needs.
Where we would fit into innovation ↓
Hitting the drawing board ↓
Putting it all together ↓
But, how would the system work? ↓
Putting it all together, again ↓
Iterating ↓
Stay tuned for more!
Reflection
Be prepared
The key to effective semi-structured interviews is preparation by building a strong protocol, grounding it in existing knowledge and literature, and clearly defining research goals. With this foundation, I was able to adapt questions as conversations unfolded and respond thoughtfully while still collecting the data we needed.
Designing for process is challenging
Designing for process is challenging because it’s dynamic. Everyone has their own way of innovating. As new discoveries emerged, we balanced evolving research with our original goals, consistently looping discussions back to our research questions and key insights to stay aligned with the challenge we were presented.
