IBM Design
Sponsor Users
Partner with real users throughout your project lifecycle. Sponsor users provide continuous feedback, ground your assumptions in reality, and help validate solutions.
Duration
30 mins
Group Size
3-5
Category
IBM Design
Difficulty
Easy
The goals of this exercise are to ground work in real user needs, get continuous feedback, validate assumptions quickly, and build empathy over time.
You will identify sponsor users, engage champions, and foster user advocacy.
These aren't one-time interviews; they're ongoing partnerships. Build relationships. Show how their feedback influenced decisions. Don't just extract value—give back. Rotate sponsor users every 3-6 months to avoid narrow perspectives. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a sponsor user relationship may not work out. Be prepared to address this gracefully.
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