Insights and Opinions

24 September 2020

Three Great Techniques for Reframing Problems and Coming Up with Solutions

We’re living through interesting times. As well as the global challenges that affect every business - COVID-19, Climate Change, increasing resource scarcity - we still have the local and personal challenges that we face as a business, organisation, or even as an individual.

Today, I’d like to share with you three techniques that I’ve found, having tried them with businesses and individuals, work wonders in helping you reframe problems as seeds for potential solutions, flipping them on their head.

18 September 2020

Our Favourite Tips and Tricks for Presenting with Mural

When presenting Workshops, Meet-ups and Remote Design Sprints, Mural is our tool of choice for introducing activity in to the session, helping us to keep everyone engaged. Since we started using Mural earlier this year, we’ve learned a few things that I’d like to share with you about how to best use Mural when presenting, especially if using a tool like Zoom as part of the presentation.

10 September 2020

Seven Tools We Use Everyday As A Remote Design Thinking Consultancy

Earlier this month, after a couple of years of planning, The Familiar transitioned to a fully-remote company. Instead of an office, our team members now work from where they feel most comfortable and productive.

Here are seven tools we use every single day to help us keep in touch, work effectively together, and deliver outstanding value to our clients.

03 September 2020

Eight Ideas in Eight Minutes. The Power of Crazy Eights.

With Crazy Eights, everyone in your workshop is expected to come up with, sketch and annotate eight ideas for the question at hand in just eight minutes. With only sixty seconds per sketch, the focus lies on the number of ideas, rather than their fidelity, with workshop members encouraged to go for “out-there” ideas wherever possible.

27 August 2020

Replace messy meetings with a Lightning Decision Lab

Our Lightning Decision Labs replace the messiness of your typical meeting with a structured and time-boxed workshop guaranteed to deliver a decision. These innovative workshops spark creative solutions and encourage doing over discussion.

This workshop is a great replacement for your typical decision-making meeting, and serves as the perfect kickoff for a larger project.

20 August 2020

Introducing Innovation Labs, the tailor-made solution to your business problems

In uncertain or difficult times, like these, business agility and innovation are key to keep your business ahead of the game. Innovation Labs are designed with this in mind, helping your business remain fluid and respond to fast-moving changes in the wider economy, society, legislation and competition.

09 July 2020

Introducing Design Sprint Remote by Sprinty

Today, we launch our first product under the Sprinty banner. Design Sprint Remote is an all-in-one toolkit for remote workshop participants, giving them the tools and resources they need to make the most of their remote workshops.

Aimed at facilitators of Remote Design Sprints, these kits can be ordered before the Design Sprint and delivered directly to the Sprint Team, giving each member of the team exactly what they need.

08 July 2020

Solve Business Problems Quickly with The Familiar’s Remote Design Sprints

Whatever challenge your organisation faces, a Remote Design Sprint is a low-cost, low-risk way to identify, understand and work to resolve that problem. At the end of a two-week Remote Design Sprint, you and your team will have all you need to attack your problems head on.

08 July 2020

When Digital Design Impacts Your Real-World Customers

As Designers working with digital media, we often shout about the advantages and efficiencies made by using an electronic solution over a traditional method. We’re excited to see the app that lets us order our prescriptions on the go or helps us learn a new language on the train. For many of us, especially the younger among us, technology is always a good thing.

08 July 2019

Why The Familiar Doesn’t Track You. (When Most Others Do)

A colleague recently had a tough time explaining, in an online chat, just why we decided not to install any tracking on our new website (www.thefamiliar.tech). The person he was talking to just could not get their head around our reasoning. So it seems useful to explain in more detail.