DD+D's Services

DD+D: a theatre-based
design consulting firm

DD+D leverages theatre techniques and acting methodology to help designers empathize with users and produce better results for their clients, as well as to communicate and collaborate around design solutions. Theatre is a fun, informative, and effective way to work out ideas, visualize concepts, and communicate solutions. It allows teams to empathize, by stepping into the shoes of users. It can reveal how people interact with services, products, and each other on a physical, emotional and intuitive level.

How can we help?
DD+D offers theatre-based workshops customized for each stage of the design process and tuned to the specific needs of designers, design teams and their clients.

1. Self
Supporting the exploration of the designer’s beliefs
- Design Empathy

2. Others
Helping to engage with and communicate design research.
- Personas

3. Discover
Supporting testing and evaluating of new ideas.
- Bodystorming / Design Improv

4. Develop
Supporting testing of existing concepts and services.
- Performance Testing
- Making Products Considerate

1. Self
Workshop: Design Empathy
The design process starts with the designer. The Design Empathy workshop helps designers acknowledge their biases and challenge their assumptions. Understanding these potential blocks will help you to connect with your customers, team members and stakeholders. Learn how actors, the world's greatest empaths, use acting methodology to understand Self before stepping into the shoes of Others.

“The workshop illuminated a critical part of the design process-the idea of empathy, inclusion, and connection. These concepts are crucial and complex and are often unarticulated. Today's session successfully got us thinking about connection and social dynamics in the way we work in our studio and in communities." Studio Leader, Design for America

2. Others
Workshop: Personas
Reconnect research to personas. We take two-dimensional representations of customers and bring them to life. Participants learn to use acting techniques to connect to the hidden needs, motivations, and goals of users. Make data memorable.

“I tend to be skeptical about ‘exercises’ like this, but I think it’s a great way to get a team reconnected with personas they've been using over time. Also a great way to onboard new team members to existing personas. And for promoting adoption to other teams within an organization." Designer, UXMasterclass Conference

3. Discovery
Workshop: Bodystorming/ Design Improv
This session uses a method of problem identification and solving to translate ideas and opportunities into physical experiences explored through improvisation and role-play. Bodystorming uses a design brief, props and simple costumes to give a sense of place. The process is designed to uncover how relationships between people, locations, and things affect ideas in ways that brainstorming alone cannot.
Rapid prototyping at its best!

“I was a participant in Bodystorming a few weeks ago, and I found it to be the ‘best’ medium for developing a ‘design’ concept within a very short period of time. It is an invaluable tool for educators as well as multi-level teams of ‘any’ discipline, to offer lessons in team building and collaboration. Without having any preconceived ideas of what we wanted to achieve, my team developed a conceptual design for an eye-care kiosk within ‘16 minutes’ - while standing.”Designer, Sears UX

4. Develop
Workshop: Performance Testing
This session is similar to a theatre rehearsal. Using an existing scenario this session tests how users interact with low and high fidelity products or services. Designers act out scenes based on user’s problems identified during the research phase to step into the shoes of the user in the context of a particular touch point or day-in-the-life. Participants learn how to use their embodied insights to create rich contextual scenarios.

"Forcing us to step into the simulation of our project showed some of inefficiencies in our designs." Designer, Design for America

Making Products Considerate

This workshop encourages designers to think differently about the products they design. Designers play the role of the product as they interact with users to understand what users want from an experience with a product. Participants explore creating products that are deferential, forthcoming, and perceptive. Learn to design good product behavior.

“It gave the team time to consider situations that may come up. Usually these situations are considered after the fact= design rework. The session forces us to not just walk through the steps as product developers but instead think of products as people with their own expectations and emotions. “
Product designer, global quick service restaurant

Who We Are:
DD+D Team Members, led by Byron Stewart, bring expertise in: UX, interaction, product, and service design, ergonomics, HCI, and business. Theatre, improv, storytelling, facilitating, directing, acting.


Byron Stewart Design Lead, DD+D
is an actor, director, consultant, facilitator, and presenter, and is owner of Dramatic Diversity/DD+D. For the past ten years, Dramatic Diversity has provided theatre-based corporate training and diversity & inclusion consultation to clients including BP/Amoco, Hewitt & Associates, Motorola, Northern Trust Bank, Brookfield Zoo, Ohio State University, and PepsiCo. Byron has also applied theatre-based techniques to the design field facilitating persona/scenario, performance testing, and design empathy workshops for Critical Mass, RTC, IIT’s Institute of Design, DePaul University, Columbia College and for Northwestern University’s Design for America Fellows. Byron has facilitated bodystorming sessions for Sears and Walgreens, and is a local leader and presenter for Chicago’s Interaction Design Association. Byron was service design consultant on the development and launch of a new diabetes class for University of Chicago and coordinator of the Chicago Service Jam. Articles on Byron’s workshops have been featured in the UXmatters and Experience Matters online magazines. He received his BFA degree from Howard University.

Conferences:
Design Research Conference “Design Improv” workshop, IIT/Institute of Design, Chicago, IL. Oct. 2011

Service Design Network’s Global Conf. “McDonald’s + Service Experience + Jam' Palace Hotel, San Francisco, CA. Oct. 2011

UXMasterclass Conference, “Using Theatre Techniques to Write Effective Personas” Field Museum Chicago, IL. Sept. 2011

DePaul University Continuing and Professional Education, with Millennia Consulting, “Bodystorming: Improv + Inclusion + Innovation” DePaul University, June, 2011

Contact us:
Byron Stewart, DD+D (773) 271 - 6054
byron@dramaticdiversity.com
www.projectbodystorming.blogspot.com

Please click here for a complete downloadable version of our brochure !

Design Research Conference + Design Improv

Byron and Raph presented, "Design Improv", a four hour interactive workshop for IIT/Institute of Design's Design Research Conference.

The Conference:

For nine years running, DRC has brought together leading thinkers, exceptional practitioners, and seasoned executives. This year’s conference will set the spotlight on exciting changes driven by emerging technologies and the new position of design research within the business world. Please join us for two days of cutting-edge ideas, fresh work, and new business connections.

The Workshop:
Design Improv with Raphael D’Amico and Byron Stewart

As design researchers we strive for empathy with our users but often find it difficult to fully close the gap. What if we could step into their shoes? Design Improv brings research to life by drawing on the unique techniques that actors and improvisers use to create believable characters and scenes. Workshop participants will learn how this approach can help prototype, build empathy, and reveal how people interact with products, services, and each other. Come ready to play!

Service Design Network Conference + DD+D

DD+D will be presenting with new client partner, McDonald's at this year's Service Design Network Conference Oct. 20-21 in San Fransisco.

Service Design Global Conference

The 4th annual Service Design Conference crosses the Atlantic this year to San Francisco where we will meet to develop and strengthen the knowledge and expertise in the business, science and practice of the innovation and improvement of services. This global gathering will be an invaluable opportunity to meet your peers, expand your network and hear from those operating at the very heart of service design.

Right from our first conference in Amsterdam in 2008; new thinking has been debated, methods shared, great ideas and strategies developed and stories have been told. Invaluable connections have been forged between individuals, groups and organizations to help design and build internal capacity and teams, create new management capabilities, all ultimately generating value for service organizations and users alike.

So if the design and provision of services is on your agenda; whether you’re a practitioner, whether you’re in the business of managing and delivering services or you’re if studying, this conference is for you.

This year’s theme of the conference:
At this year’s conference we’ll be exploring what happens when service design meets business. We’ll look at how, where and when our two broad professions work together to generate value, what we can learn from each other and ask what the future of this relationship might be. The theme is:

“From sketchbook to spreadsheet”
We’re particularly interested in understanding the impact that service design is now making to organisations’ bottom lines and in hearing where the compelling stories of designing business strategies, monetising service propositions and cultural change are.

We will also be maintaining our focus on the practice and business of service design itself; new tools and methods yes, but also how to buy and sell service design, and what the design community can learn from business and vice-versa.

DD+D's Byron Stewart,and McDonald's Jeff Pollard will present:

McDonald's+Service Experience+Jam
McDonald’s Chief Restaurant Officer has a favorite saying, “It’s not real until it’s real in the restaurant.” The path to making service experience real at McDonald’s has had many twists and turns and is still in its early days as a formal practice. We’re excited to share how service culture has been cultivated over the years at McDonald’s and how we’ve employed tools from the disciplines of theater and design and are collaborating with innovators in the service design community to have a positive impact on our business. And it wouldn’t be “real” if we didn’t have an embodied employee persona performance thrown in for good measure!

I attended Adam Lawrence's workshop at the conference.
Adam is the owner of Work Play Experience in Germany.

And also works in the area of theatre + design.
Here is a clip from the workshop.