"Show & Tell": Building Direct Communication and Innovation Across Dep

日本語サマリ

本記事では、プロダクトデザイナーのYanがチーム横断でのコミュニケーションと新しいアイデアが生まれやすい環境づくりを目的とした社内ワークショップ「Show & Tell」について紹介しています。

「Show & Tell」は、デザイナーやエンジニアが進行中のプロジェクトや新しいアイデア、課題へのアプローチなどを他部署（プロダクト、マーケティング、セールスなど）と共有し、リアルタイムで率直なフィードバックを得る場です。1〜2週間ごとに開催され、誰もが気軽に意見交換できる場として機能しています。

記事ではこの取り組みの進め方に加え、以下のような効果が得られていることが述べられています：
・幅広い職種のメンバーがプロダクト開発に関わる機会の創出
・プロダクト開発プロセスへの理解向上
・チーム間の信頼関係の構築
・開発初期段階でのリスク軽減
・ユーザーのニーズにより適合したプロダクトづくり

もともとはデザインチームの内部施策として始まりましたが、今では他チームにも広がっており、今後も柔軟に形を変えながら継続することを目指しています。Yanは最後に、「同様の取り組みを行っている企業があれば、ぜひ交流したい」と呼びかけています。

What is Show & Tell?

We value direct communication and continuous innovation above all. That's why we're excited to introduce our newest initiative: Show & Tell, a collaborative workshop designed to create a dedicated space for sharing work-in-progress, discussing problems and potential solutions, and receiving immediate, direct input from diverse perspectives.

Every 1~2 weeks, during the session, designers and developers present their current projects—whether it's a new idea of improvement, a standard introduced to the design system, a feature in development, or a new approach to improve the code base—while colleagues from various departments offer honest feedback and fresh insights.

How Show & Tell Works

Our Show & Tell sessions follow a straightforward format designed to maximize direct communication while respecting everyone's time:

1. Regular Schedule: We hold sessions that last 1 hr at most, every 1~2 weeks to maintain momentum without overwhelming participants.
2. Focused Presentations: Designers and developers share work that would benefit from cross-departmental input, explaining both their process and their current challenges.
3. Direct Feedback: Attendees are encouraged to provide honest feedback and immediate comments—asking questions, suggesting alternatives, or offering insights from their professional perspective.
4. Follow up discussion: For challenges and ideas that may take longer to discuss, the involved team members will schedule a meeting to gather together to work on a solution while respecting the time of other colleagues.

Benefits to Our Team and Product

Enabling broader participation in product development

We've found that colleagues from marketing, sales, and other teams are genuinely interested in getting more involved in creating and improving our product, rather than focusing at their key tasks only. Show & Tell provides them with an opportunity to contribute their insights early in the development cycle.

Increasing visibility into the creative process

Usually, other departments only see the final results that ship to end users. Show & Tell satisfies their curiosity about how ideas evolve and take shape step by step, from concept to completion.

Strengthening cross-departmental relationships

In an remote environment that values direct communication, we always think of approaches to enable and encourage interactions among colleagues and introduced initiatives like game event, office day, and yearly offsite. Now show & Tell as a more frequent event is encouraging honest, respectful dialogue, and building trust as well as understanding between team members who might otherwise rarely collaborate.

Reducing development risk

Designers and developers benefit from hearing different viewpoints while their work is still in the early stage. The earlier such feedback can be collected, the easier and less costly it is to make changes. Show & Tell creates a mechanism for continuous improvement throughout the development process rather than awaiting critique after completion, which brings enormous risks.

Better refining solutions and aligning with real needs

Early feedback helps identify potential issues or make pivot quickly when they're still easy to address, resulting in more polished final products. While input from customer-facing teams helps ensure that what we're building truly meets user needs and expectations.

Looking Forward

As we continue to develop Show & Tell, we're excited to expand participation across teams and refine the format based on participant feedback. On the other hand, we also encourage teams other than design and engineer to use this workshop to share their works. Actually, at the very beginning this practice is introduced and only utilized by designers.

What began as a collaborative initiative is quickly becoming a cornerstone of our innovation process. We believe this approach has valuable applications for organizations of any size looking to break down silos and accelerate innovation. If you've implemented similar workshops in your company or are inspired to start one, we'd love to hear about your experiences.

Connect with us to continue the conversation about fostering direct communication and collaborative innovation in product development!