Last Wednesday I attended the first ExploreUX event in their new "A Day in the Life" series. It featured Emily Hodes who gave a high level overview of the design-thinking methodology they use to design new products. She works for Hobsons, a fast-growing educational software company. She gave a 30 minute presentation about the process they use to create a new product. She developed [this map](http://www.uxemily.com/design-process/) to help describe the usability perspective she uses to create new products. At the beginning of the half hour, she talked about the problem they hoped to solve, and by the end she showed us some of the content the new product features. It was a well organized talk.

But the great part about the event came after her talk. We moved to another room (the design suite at Citrix (did I mention that this whole event was hosted in Citrix Raleigh's new facility?)) where we broke into small groups and actually did some "Story Mapping". Story Mapping is a process by which you take the scenario you have descibed previously and break it down into steps and further into questions, thoughts, and barriers. From this map, which is done on the wall in different colored post-it notes, you choose your MVP (minimum viable product) tasks. These are the minimum tasks/features you have to build in order to start testing the product with users so you can get real feedback.

I was somewhat pessimistic about the activity portion of the evening because we were all strangers. But, it turned out that it was actually a great way to get people talking together. The groups were small enough that everyone was able to speak when they wanted to, but nobody felt pressured to contribute.