Whether its your first workshop or your fiftieth, this guide will help you and your team overcome ambiguity and create user-centered solutions. Our rule of thumb is "3:1". Feel free to mix up ideas that will keep your workshop engaging! To conclude, I wanted to give you one last little tip as a bonus. This is extremely helpful when it comes to reviewing your workshop, and, if youre running your workshop with clients, photos also make for a great souvenir. It's an extremely efficient way of solving pressing product-related issues. This is the time to ask the group to come together to write a detailed problem statement. For this part of the workshop, participants will need plenty of Post-it notes and a large surface to work onsuch as a table, wall, or whiteboard. Step 2. No, the great thing about design thinking is its accessibility! Your slides should directly reflect your workshop agenda. It includes detailed logistics and clearly outline the intentions of the workshop and its desired outcomes. That means having a beginners mind and the confidence to share. Building a highly effective team takes effort, consideration,, Have you heard of Design Thinking? Design Thinking workshops enable you to spread this value across your organization (or your clients organization). Stage Two Tools: Unpacking, Sensemaking, and Insights Running a successful Design Thinking workshop starts with knowing what you want. Please add your ideas to the comments below! Presentation (10 minutes): What is the define stage and why is it necessary? Reflection and discussion (5 minutes): As a group, discuss what youve learned from the ideation phase so far. Lastly, if time permits, use the last few minutes of your workshop to take inventory of what youve accomplished during the time spent together and inform the participants of the next steps in the project. Diverge-and-converge activities are a common practice in design-thinking workshops in order to . A good workshop facilitator must know how to get the word out within the company about. By no means just for designers, a Design Thinking workshop is a methodology intended for the whole team and can be applied to numerous areas of business, from sales through to senior management. For this example, well use the worst possible idea technique followed by a simple brainstorm. Time: Complex problem solving takes time. Deliver a world-class experience to your customers through the application of Design Thinking. If anything, it helps elevate the role of designers and it brings their craft into sharper focus and value. So how do you go about setting up and facilitating a Design Thinking workshop? For the last 5 minutes, participants should combine any steps that are too similar, narrowing it down to 8-15 steps. This might be a good time to share some interesting statsfor example: teams that are applying IBMs Design Thinking practices have, A real-world Design Thinking case study, such as, Presentation (10 minutes): What is empathy? Create and validate an innovation for and with your clients, customers or users. Well look at what to include in your workshop agenda in phase two of this guide a little further down. Or align on specific requirements? Our career-change programs are designed to take you from beginner to pro in your tech careerwith personalized support every step of the way. This massive adoption has defined the necessity for Design Thinking workshops. Have you ever started a workshop where the participants are a little overwhelmed at what the buzzword design thinking means? CareerFoundry is an online school for people looking to switch to a rewarding career in tech. While you can expect a lot of discussion here, preparing an initial list of key performance indicators is a helpful starting point. Encourage participants to use one piece of paper per screen; this way, they wont need to start over completely if one goes slightly wrong. That way, you can take it in turns to lead activities throughout, and you can also designate secondary roles for yourselves such as note taking, technical checks, photos of the material produced, etc. We help businesses and brands succeed in the digital age. When the statements been written, take a moment to have a brief reflection and discussion on what everybody has learned so far. Like any design project, be sure to continuously iterate and improve upon your Design Thinking workshop. You might break the ideation phase up as follows: Now youll introduce a key UX design tool into the mix: user journey maps. The Statement of Opportunity expresses the topline project opportunity from the teams perspective. In the second part of the ideation phase, youll get your participants to compile a series of user actions into a timeline. A definition of what Design Thinking is. If we designed our workshop to run over a longer period, the group may wish to explore ideas further, by discovering recipes and cake designs. Presentation of problem statements (20 minutes): Ask each participant to share their problem statements and how might we questions, with a brief explanation as to why they decided to focus on this particular problem. you might ask yourself. By using methods of empathizing to discover more information, we can get more context to our problem, and start to understand the wants and needs we hope to meet with our end product. For this activity, encourage participants to sketch out their solution rather than using words. Whatever the challenge is that youre hoping to solve with the workshop, have it defined well in advance so that everyone is on the same page from the start. Its important that the group understand the mindset and that they can reflect on real-life scenarios they could apply Design Thinking to. the stakes, the business objectives and your client's needs will make you not only a relevant facilitator, but a good facilitator. As the facilitator of a Design Thinking workshop, you are responsible for helping teams challenge assumptions, discover actionable insights, and arrive at innovative outcomes. Youll want to stock up on white copy paper, colored paper, pencils, marker pens, Post-It notes of different colors, sticky tape, and whiteboards.. This statement, everyone likes chocolate, could be identified as a common assumption, and as a facilitator, you could see this as an opportunity to demonstrate that by assuming, we arent empathizing with our end-user. When design thinking emerged in the '90s and '00s, workplaces were made up of cubicles and closed doors, and the term "user experience" had only just been coined at Apple. In the final stage of the Design Thinking process, we are capturing honest responses and feedback, by inviting our end-user to a glimpse into what the final outcome might look like. Summaries can be shared early in the session to quickly level-set, while raw data can be referenced during activities or decision making. Design Thinking looks at the customer's perspective from the start to the end of an experience. Design thinking workshop step by step guide | by Taras Bakusevych | UX Collective Write Sign up Sign In 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. Duis cursus. How to run a UX design workshop by Andreas Johansson; Three Types of narratives to build amazing workshop experiences or really any of Daniel Stillman's writings; Managing Discussions by Matt Leighninger more ground rules, including "Bob's Rules," this is part of a series of 3 blogs entries on facilitation (These are in no particular order. And we came to the following conclusion: Being a good workshop facilitator is like being made out of bamboo. Activityrefining your solution (10 minutes): Incorporating what theyve learned about the user and the feedback they received on their initial ideas, its time for the Design Thinkers to pull everything into one single solution. Using empathy maps and role-playing, encourage the group to get into the shoes of their target user. A prototype is used to test at an early stage, gather feedback and simulate a user experience. It is proudly displayed, and the act of the happy couple cutting into it is celebrated by close family and friends. Identify your skills, refine your portfolio, and attract the right employers. There are many reasons you might hold a Design Thinking workshop; perhaps you need ideas for a new product, or maybe youre looking for ways to improve an existing one. Lets say we are creating a cake for our friend, and we cant decide what kind of cake to bake or to buy. Start by introducing an ideation technique of your choice. Unlike a traditional presentation, the slides of a facilitation deck are designed to guide collaboration and generate discussion. Because the quality of your facilitation during the workshop is a determining factor of the success of your project and of your clients satisfaction. While there are many ways to describe the process, weve broken it down into three steps: Prepare, Facilitate and Document. Its worth noting that before you approach the five stages of design thinking, its always helpful to consider the scale of the problem and as a group, accept the project. A wedding cake will be seen and eaten by many guests. Further down, youll find more information to help you with each checklist item. Throughout your design career, you might find yourself running Design Thinking workshops for clientsgoing into different organizations and showing them how they can apply Design Thinking to their own business challenges. Youll find that the participants better control their allotted time and are less frustrated when their time for reflection comes to an end. Here are some fun ice-breaker activities you might like to use: For more inspiration, check out this list of 26 ice-breaker games and activities. Go over the benefits, give examples of successful workshops, and leave a few minutes at the end for any questions or clarifications needed from the group about the process.. Activityconduct user research (10 minutes): Normally, the empathise phase consists of conducting research with actual users. This will allow them to see the benefits of the approach, and maybe it will open up other opportunities for you to use this methodology within the company. Weve covered. However, the process is applicable to a wide range of obstacles facing individuals and teams. Dedicate the last ten minutes or so to reflection and discussion. How accurate are they? It's a process that is designed to encourage creative problem solving and innovation from each member of the group in order to address business challenges. We can ensure the success of the Workshop by asking the participants about any particular projects that could benefit from these techniques. Create a crossfunctional team of allies who can help you advertise the process and build buy-in for your recommendations. We can then establish a variety of methods in how we might Empathize with our users: For our cake design, these insights could help us discover our users flavor preferences, any hobbies that might relate to the visual design of the cake; and who else might be eating the cake at the party. Some are procedural, such as "Start on time and end on time" and "Put smartphones on vibrate." Procedural ground rules are useful but don't help your. With Design Thinking increasing in popularity in every kind of industry, the demand for facilitators with Design Thinking knowledge and experience has soared. A Design Thinking workshop is a collaborative session that is focused on the five phases of Design Thinking. Every workshop should have ground rules. Consider the following list of sections as inspiration for what to include in your post-workshop documentation: When it comes to communicating complex ideas quickly, having a library of visualization techniques on hand is critical. the mobile screen) that would be needed for this step. For example: The step browses through potential matches could be propelled by the user goal of wanting to meet new people. Discuss the results of preparatory UX research, technical audits, and other data gathered in preparation. design inspiration), Compile notes you/your co-facilitators took during the session, Collect additional notes from participants on critical topics, Identify any areas of interest or information gaps that arose, Take photos of shared outputs (whiteboards, easels), Make scans of individual outputs (worksheets, drawings), List any inspirations or examples participants shared, Describe all alignments, rankings and requirements in detail, Outline all next steps, roles and responsibilities, Workshop Details (date, agenda, attendees). Well yes, you must: Okay, but then "how can I be all of this at once?" Why? Here are some of the benefits at a glance: Most companies today have innovation envy. Lets find out. A way in which this cake design process could be elaborated is in the context of creating the workshop alongside a schools Home Economics class, or other groups who regularly have access to kitchens and cooking equipment. Common approaches in Design Thinking include empathy maps, storyboards, activity networks and cluster matrices. Given the complexity of opportunities, this step can be a significant challenge that requires anywhere 2 to 6 weeks or longer, if any critical elements are missing or outdated (ex. Since its debut in 1969 when Simon Herbert introduced the model in the Science of the Artificial, Design Thinking has revolutionized business models, education systems, processes of innovation, product and service design and human mindsets. Within a workshop context, facilitators typically focus on the five stages of Design Thinking to encourage collaboration, creative problem solving, and innovation from each member of the group. Help participants unpack technical problems and appreciate the current user exprience, constraints and supporting systems. We focus on quantity, not quality and even half-baked ideas can be contributed to the discussion. On average, spend three hours of preparation for each hour of workshop. Want to know how to run a Design Thinking workshop? We rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo. Someone might say, Lets bake a chocolate sponge cake, everyone likes chocolate, and a few other people nod and murmur in agreement. Its as much about changing processes as getting results, Design Thinking isn't just a one-off fix to a specific problem; its a culture change. Its worth suggesting to the team to use one piece of paper to represent each screen so that mistakes can be easily rectified and the journey is easy for everyone to follow.. Its a process that is designed to encourage creative problem solving and innovation from each member of the group in order to address business challenges.. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. Activitycreate mobile screens (15 minutes): For each step in the user journey, participants will sketch out the user interface (i.e. In addition to writing for the CareerFoundry blog, Emily has been a regular contributor to several industry-leading design publications, including the InVision blog, UX Planet, and Adobe XD Ideas. Now that the team is warmed up and all on the same page, its time to start thinking about the user. Whether your workshop will be in-person, online, or a mix of both, heres what to consider when choosing your workshop location: While in-person is always best, powerful digital tools like Miro and Mural can help remote teams workshop together when apart. In this post, well share our favorite online tools you can use to make your job as a facilitator easier. Obviously, this ratio can be adapted according to the complexity and your level of familiarity with the subject. Coffee is always appreciated, and quick icebreakers or intros may be needed if teams seldom meet. Activitydefine the activities and steps in the customers experience (15 minutes): Ask participants to write down all the steps they can think of that make up the users journey. As a facilitator, you could mention that this form of research could identify with our Empathize stage, as well as our Ideate stage. Designed for a very special occasion, the cake will often be custom-made. With preparations ready and the agenda set, you can now facilitate a productive workshop. Activitygroup the steps into phases (10 minutes): Participants will now group the steps from the last activity into phases, aiming for 3-7 phases in total. If you are in charge of delivering a summary of the work done, start it immediately after the workshop, while the information is still fresh in your mind. Where did the insights come from? Regardless of the activities chosen, the goal here is to create a prioritized list of stories spanning the entire experience. I use examples of Personas, explaining that they could be based on one person, and therefore be very real, or if they use the data from several people, they can create a fictional character with whom they will empathize and keep in mind throughout the design journey. For more complex problems, we might revisit previous stages, and create further prototypes using our deeper understanding. That way, if there is an opportunity to develop and deepen the process, you might create a series of workshops that aim to tackle different issues and projects. Often when the group creates their Personas, they may realize that they need more information, some saying, Oh, I dont know if I have asked the right questions, in which case, we as facilitators can demonstrate that they are able to return to the empathize stage, as Design Thinking doesnt have to be a linear process. The following walkthrough outlines the major milestones you could expect in a 1-day workshop intended to align on the strategic requirements for a user-centered experience. Other members of the team have to guess which is the lie, Everyone has to say who they would invite onto their very own late-night talk show (Optional: What their first question to them would be, and why. Make sure you create a meaningful experience for them and there is a good chance that the workshop will be a success and that the opportunity will arise again. 14 Ground Rules for Team Meetings . The goal of this time is to generate dozens of relevant user stories for each persona. All these benefits aside, Design Thinking workshops are incredibly fun and engaging. You can do this remotely or in person. Pre-work: Giving participants a simple assignment to complete and bring to the workshop is a great way to enrich your workshops and get participants into the Design Thinking mindset early. Design thinking consists of five key stages which well explore in this workshop: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. ), How to run the design thinking for beginners workshop, How baking a cake can explain design thinking, A step-by-step guide to planning a workshop, An honest* guide to facilitating hybrid events. Open a new workshop calendar (ex. Why, or why not? Through the idea vault process, we are narrowing our ideas down by asking a series of questions that relate to the feasibility of the design, and if it truly meets our Personas needs. Use some of the most effective tools and techniques to design your concepts. Another simple yet powerful touch is to position some thought-provoking artifacts around the room. Its also a good idea to have a camera on-hand so you can document the workshop. As creative and exciting as our rapid-fire exercises are, they can leave our group with too many options, feeling swamped with potential solutions. Is it to uncover new opportunities, solve a specific user problem, or improve a product or feature? You could develop an exercise in which participants look for evidence to support their statement, and evidence against it, thus coming to the conclusion that not everyone likes chocolate. This gives our workshop participants an understanding of why it is so important to work in an empathetic manner throughout our journey. If your workshop takes place over several days, take the time necessary at the end of each day to write down the big ideas of the day. Workshops are about getting stuff done, and are often used as milestones to start things or make decisions. 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