Online Interactive Format

To inform clients about the conceptual design and solicit their feedback via online interaction.

PURPOSE:

This format is most useful in the stage when initial design ideas are generated by a design team, and they need to be presented to clients for review and evaluation. It facilitates in prioritizing the design elements.

DESIGN PHASE:

(highlighted in bold are the phase or phases most applicable)

Vision and goals
Site exploration
Program development
Co-design
Design evaluation
Implementation

MATERIALS NEEDED:

Pen and Paper to take notes
Laptop/Computer
Internet
Online platform such as Zoom meeting
Google drive to share files
Computer application such as PowerPoint and Adobe PDF Reader

TIME REQUIRED:

This format employs both synchronous and asynchronous activities. The only phase where the design team and clients participate synchronously is during the meeting, which is relatively short, within 30 to 45 minutes.

For the design ideas presentation, which will be asynchronous, if there are alternatives, the slides or videos should be prepared allocating no more than 10 minutes for each, and for the evaluation 5 minutes each.

SUGGESTIONS:

Do use this format as an informative and interactive engagement phase when there is a time constraint for online meetings.
Do acknowledge the client's perspective on engagement activity and formats, and respect their time and knowledge for engagement strategies applied.
Do provide the presentation and evaluation format in online platform accessible to all for easy access.
Do not overwhelm the client with lengthy presentation or documents.

Overview

This format engages people in two different activities, one being the presentation of conceptual design ideas to the client and another the solicitation of client feedback. The format was born out of a necessity for facilitating an engagement session where the clients were unable to dedicate enough time for the meetings, and is useful when designers and clients cannot have face-to-face meetings or discussions. Advancement in technology has enabled people to have meetings through video conference, and hence this format is applicable in such situations.

Organization and Process

This strategy employs three phases: Informative Presentation, Online Meeting, and Design Evaluation. The online meeting is more in the informative phase rather than the engagement/activity phase and the other phases are asynchronous. The number of participants can range anywhere from three to more than twenty, depending upon the type of organization/client.

Figure 1. Online Interactive Meeting - Engagement Phase Breakdown.
Source: Pranisha Karmacharya

Steps

(Before the Meeting)

Work with the client to determine scheduling constraints, and set up a meeting time.
Inform client about the meeting format and agenda beforehand through email or other preferred means of communication.
Prepare PowerPoint slides for client to review early so that they are prepared to discuss and ask any questions for clarification during the meeting.
Prepare a client evaluation form to obtain individualized feedback at the end of the meeting. Google Slides or Google Forms is a great tool for this.
Send any content you want the client to review before the meeting with enough time for them to go through the materials. This should happen at minimum 4-5 days in advance.

(Day of the Meeting)

During meeting, walk them through the meeting agenda, and ask if they have viewed the materials sent before. Make sure to imply that this is not a review session, but an informative one. Ask them if they have any questions for clarification or if they would like to discuss anything from the presentation. Also, make sure they are clear about the whole process including the evaluation.
Break the participants into groups of 2-6, depending on the number of participants and facilitators. If using Zoom, there is an option to create breakout groups provided by the platform.
After smaller group discussions, return to the larger group to share key points with the other groups.
Ask the participants if they have any final thoughts or questions. Give them the option to email any questions that come up after the meeting. Inform participants about the next step of the process (i.e., design evaluation), before leaving the meeting. Give them a deadline for providing feedback.

(After the Meeting)

Go through the evaluation sheets and prioritize the elements according to the feedback.
Inform the client through email or other preferred means of communication about the results and ask them if there are any final changes to be made before moving on.

Case Example

Our group of MLA students at UGA worked on a landscape project for Kate's Club for the class LAND 7050 Community Design Studio over the course of four months in Fall 2020. The project was to design a Healing Landscape for Kate's Club where children and members of the club can spend as much time as possible in a new outdoor refuge where they can get sensory stimulation. Due to geographic and pandemic constraints, it was impossible for us to have face-to-face meetings every time we needed to meet with the client. With the exception of our site visit, our team had to improvise accordingly with each engagement phase.

The Kate' Club group formed a Steering Committee for our engagement phases, so there were no more than four participants at once. In addition to the inability to do face-to-face meeting, the Committee was unable to dedicate more than 30-45 minutes for each session, which we learned somewhat the hard way during our Design Conceptualization phase. Thus, to accommodate the need for conceptual masterplan alternatives presentation and evaluation for Engagement Phase III, we had to plan asynchronous activities for the phases afterwards.

After the second engagement phase of conceptualizing the design, the design process moved to the preparation of conceptual masterplan for Engagement Phase III. This phase was divided into three phases (see Figure1). From the client's vision and potential programming ideas generated in Phase II, we prepared three conceptual masterplans as alternatives. After that, the idea was to present those masterplans to the steering committee. As we could not have face-to-face interaction for the presentation, we decided to prepare PowerPoint slides for that (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Presentation Slide Format with Text and Images

With the mindset of providing every piece of information the way we would do while delivering presentation, we didn't realize that the slides were long enough for the client to be inundated with the level of information provided. We also prepared Google slides for evaluating the masterplan with icons so that they can be moved around according to client's preferences (see Figure 3). This type of strategy was applied in Phase II by Josh Goeden, and again applied during this phase of the project. After that, we emailed them the presentation slides and shared the Google slides. We had the online meeting shortly after, hence most of them didn't have a chance to look at the presentation slides with conceptual masterplans thoroughly. The meeting concluded within 30 minutes, and we asked them to review the masterplan in Google slides by moving the icons. The initial thought was to include Google Forms, as the participants were familiar with that, after the masterplan evaluation. This was intended to include multiple choice questions so that the participants could choose the design elements for prioritization. However, we learned at the next meeting that they were concerned with the amount of information we had provided and it was overwhelming for them, therefore, we dropped the idea.

The feedback provided by the committee in masterplan evaluation was rather helpful to organize and merge our design concepts into one complete masterplan and we continued to get feedback from them even after creating the group masterplan. In addition to that, our classmates were really helpful in sorting out some of the concerns we had. However, the wealth of information resulted in overwhelming the clients, which could be clearly seen in their evaluation of the masterplan.

Figure 3. Masterplan Evaluation with Smiley Icons to move around

Lessons Learned

The one big lesson that we learned is to first understand the client and acknowledge their perspective and understanding on different engagement activities or formats. I would recommend asking about the amount of time they can dedicate for different activities or what format they would prefer and plan accordingly. The presentation slides we prepared to present the three conceptual masterplans were rather longer than desired by the client. These would have been less of an issue when design team and the participants could have face-to-face presentation and instant feedback or discussion session. However because this was not possible for us, we should have considered an alternate strategy more appropriate to our remote meeting format.

We felt that it might have worked better if the presentation slides prepared included more images rather than descriptive texts (ours included both). Additionally, the evaluation format was in the form of a survey with multiple-choice questions with Google Forms instead to prioritize the design elements. To assume that they can be involved in participation for the Google Forms survey for prioritization after evaluating the masterplan was the biggest mistake we made.

Key Takeaways:

Learn about client's perspective and experience with different engagement formats and activities; make note of their preferred choice.
Avoid lengthy slides or videos prepared to present design ideas or alternatives, and instead be to the point. Images are preferred rather than heavy text.
Aim for a poster format that limits the number of pages, so that the client does not have to scroll down too much.
For the evaluation, choose an quick, simple, and user-friendly format. Look for a simple structure such as a multiple-choice survey or questionnaire.

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