UX design technique using Post-it notes?

Question

What is the official/unofficial name of the technique I have seen designer use by placing lots of Post it notes along a wall and categorizing them into normally three groups.

Normally someone writes all the collective ideas the group has and then they all start placing them on the wall where they think they belong.

• Keep side, these are essential features for the UI
• Maybe middle, features which are undecided are placed in the middle
• Drop side, unecessary features that can be removed from the design scope

Any information or demonstration videos would be appreciated, as I would like to start using it within my design stage.

Also any other cool/alternative team activities you could suggest would be welcome!

Thanks

Answer 1

What you are asking about is not a single process / task, but is rather made up of many different processes / tasks depending on your goals.

A good place to start would be the Slideshare from Becoming a Stickynote Ninja - UX Week 2008.

Answer 2

I think you are alluding to Scrum/Agile methodology. Everyone has their own unique 'bastardized' version but it is a much more fluid approach (rather than the traditional Waterfall process)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

and this site mimics the sticky notes:

http://scrumy.com/

Answer 3

Common things done with post-its in the UX process:

• card sorting: useful for sorting all the 'parts' (be it content, goals, objectives, etc.) of a site into meaningful categories.

• flow diagrams: mapping out the content structure of a site

• paper prototyping: simple wireframing on paper.

In this particular case, it sounds like one is prioritizing features into a matrix. I don't know of a particular term for this other than 'prioritizing features'.