Notes from the Uxcel course
Design workshops bring together team members and stakeholders to collaborate on generating ideas and resolving design challenges or decisions.
Workshops are for decision-making and problem-solving. Focus on specific issues and may last up to half a day or longer. Attendees contribute and collaborate through hands-on activities.
Kick-off workshop:
- Outline users’ objectives, needs, pain points
- Chart out a user journey map and potential features
- Prioritize ideas for implementation
Use energizers, or icebreakers (short and fun activities) for people to get creative.
Explain the goal and culture of the workshop. For example, share insights openly and not interrupt speakers.
Types of design workshop
- Discovery
- Empathy
- Critique
- Design
- Prioritization
- Ideation
Tools
Build your facilitation library:
- Activities
- Materials
- Techniques
Remote workshops
- Define clear goals & agenda
- Don’t skip warming activities & icebreakers
- Schedule breaks
- Keep it shorter than 3 hours, split into 2 days if possible
*Some people take longer to learn new collaboration tools.
Tools:
- Videoconferencing: Google Meet, Skype, Zoom
- Whiteboard: Miro, Mural, Stormboard
- Design: Figma, Canva
- Survey: Google Forms, Typeform, SurveyMonkey
- Present: Google Draw, Google Slides
- Engagement: Stormz, Butter, Mentimeter
Planning and agenda
Goal categories:
- Agreement: Reaching consensus on the direction
- Understanding: Gaining a shared deeper knowledge of a subject
- Generation: Creating new ideas or thought patterns
- Strengthening: Building empathy between teams or strengthening relationships between parties
Ask yourself, “What questions must be answered for me to move toward my goal?” and write them down: audience? ideal experience? current state? metrics? what research needs conducted? roadblocks?
Create outline & rough time estimate. Send out invitations and include the short version of the agenda, at least 48 hours in advance.
Activities
Brainstorming
- Postup
- The Six Thinking Hats: different perspectives to look at an issue
- SCAMPER: get tangible ideas to improve or create product
- Role-playing (as a system, as a user/team member)
- Brainwriting
Decision making
- Affinity diagramming: group sticky notes into categories
- Forced ranking: dot voting, impact-effort matrixing, $100 test
- Landscape mapping: create UX maps
- Roadmap: decide on time frames and who’s responsible for what
- Lightning Decision Jam
Presentation
- Intro - main body - conclusion: warm up - activities - actionable insights and future plans
- Agenda & rules/guidelines
Deliverables
Save assets, record sessions, and document workshop deliverables:
- Notes
- Photos of shared outputs
- Individual outputs: prioritize instead of storing everything
- Requirements: scope, milestones, processes
- Next steps
- Roles & responsibilities
- Post-workshop report: attachments or links to other deliverables
High-level workshop processes
Framework:
- Opening: review challenge background, discuss goals, get insights from participants
- Exploratory: hands-on activities
- Closing: insights → actionable solutions
Diverge → Explore → Converge
Opening
- Outline workshop goals: go over relevant background information (users, pain points, etc.)
- Refer to the questions/problems & have each participant come up with ideas (diverging)
Should be a quiet time to avoid chatty participants affecting other attendees.
Exploring
- Go over ideas to produce ideas & solutions
The facilitator can face arguments, misinterpretations, shy and dominant participants.
Closing
- Narrow down options & prioritize them. Vote on solutions.
- Draft a plan of action
If there are disagreements, the facilitator can exercise their best judgment to make a final decision.
Facilitation techniques
Location
- Bigger rooms with plenty of space to walk around
- Comfy seating, good lighting, smaller tables for easier arrangement
- A place for writing/sticky notes: Whiteboard, glass door, wall space
Encourage participants
- Ask people to speak in turns or request a specific number of contributions from everyone
- Ask people to write things down
Dealing with difficult people
- Off-topic: ask the distractor to clarify their point and gently reframe the conversation if it’s off-topic.
- Talking over others: “speak one at a time” rule, allocate speak up time, taking turns
- Not participating: call them out and direct a question/task to them, request a number of deliverables
- Quiet: split to small groups, include individualistic activities like brainwriting and postup
- Dominant: lay out interaction rules, form smaller teams with balanced personalities