Well here are our handpicked, Whether it is an internal or external client, its essential to know the project's business context. For the purpose of your workshop, youll frame the challenge as a how might we question: How might we improve the user experience for LoveFoundry customers? It could be that you need to come up with a drastic strategy for regaining consumer trust after a PR disaster! Workshops are about getting stuff done, and are often used as milestones to start things or make decisions. Let's have fun in our workshops and work will become a game. Chances are you have. As a designer, incorporating Design Thinking into your process will help you to quickly come up with viable, user-centric solutionsultimately resulting in a quicker time-to-market, improved customer retention, significant cost savings, and a great ROI. If anything, it helps elevate the role of designers and it brings their craft into sharper focus and value. Wait, what? Congratulations: youve just conducted an engaging, informative, and extremely valuable Design Thinking workshop! When preparing your slides, plan to include four basic types: While a save-the-date should follow shortly after youve identified your team, the pre-workshop email is typically sent a few days before the workshop. Creating a solid agenda will ensure your team stays focused on the challenge and energy levels stay high throughout the day.. 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. Everyone has the ability to think creatively especially after a good warmup. We then create two teams, ensuring that the chosen Persona profiles are on opposite teams and are designed for one another. Make a note of these answers so that your workshops continue to improve steadily over time., Heres a shortlist of what to keep in mind at all times while running your Design Thinking workshop!. The goal of the workshop might be to come up with ways to improve the user experience for LoveFoundry customers. Reflection and discussion (10 minutes): As a group, discuss what youve learned so far. Whether its your first workshop or your fiftieth, this guide will help you and your team overcome ambiguity and create user-centered solutions. The works of art can then be displayed in the workshop room, for your viewing pleasure! This will allow the project to obtain greater internal support, since all the stakeholders will have been involved from the get-go. Define, Ideate), Select 1-2 activities to support each step (15 min 3 hr), High-level summary including objective and outcomes, Pre-workshop assignment (ex. 1. Its always a good idea to kick off the workshop with an ice-breaker. user personas). ! Design thinking is for everyone! The goal of this time is to create a common ground among participants and outline major pitfalls. Refresh the page, check Medium 's site status, or find something interesting to read. They have a simple, one-sentence format that can be quickly created and compared. 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. The job's a game!. Take part in one of our FREE live online UX design events with industry experts, and read up on UX graduate Alices career change from corporate banking. Next, youll move onto the define phase. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. This is the time to ask the group to come together to write a detailed problem statement. And if the perfect phrasing remains elusive, its okay to leave the door open to copyedits in the future. Our second exercise is called the Ideas Vault, this exercise is designed to relieve our participants of any decision-overwhelm when it comes to choosing which ideas to take forward in our prototype phase. 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.. What they do after the workshop is the most important. Ask the group to consider the following: This is also a good opportunity to assess the current user personas the team are using. Youll also need to incorporate an introduction, an ice-breaker activity to get the group warmed up, and sufficient breaks throughout. If youre running a workshop for a client, perhaps the main purpose is to teach them about Design Thinking and how it can be applied to their business. 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. Theres also flexibility when it comes to the length and location of a Design Thinking Workshop. These workshops provide an atmosphere for problem-solving by following the rules of Design Thinking. Regardless of the activities chosen, the goal here is to create a prioritized list of stories spanning the entire experience. You can also include any good photos you took of the workshop. Through this process, participants will start to develop their design thinking muscles and learn how to take on bigger projects in future. Do they need to brainstorm new ideas? A good workshop facilitator must know how to get the word out within the company aboutthe beneficial effects of Design Thinking on collaboration and on a customer-centric culture. To conclude, I wanted to give you one last little tip as a bonus. It's an extremely efficient way of solving pressing product-related issues. We rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo. Also, don't hesitate to delegate certain tasks to the participants. For example, a cupcake is designed to be eaten by one person, a low-cost treat that doesnt warrant a special occasion. quality of your facilitation during the workshop is a determining factor of the success of your project and of your clients satisfaction. Rich user personas are the hallmark of Design Thinking, and an excellent way to articulate detailed behavioral information about whom youre designing for. If time permits, allow 15-20 minutes at the start of every day for icebreaker activities or energizing moments. When you use Design Thinking methodology in a co-creation workshop, its undeniable that being well-prepared is essential to ensure its success. Its important that the group understand the mindset and that they can reflect on real-life scenarios they could apply Design Thinking to. Whether theyre starting from scratch or upskilling, they have one thing in common: They go on to forge careers they love. These workshops constitute several activities that provide a solid ground for co-creation, collaboration, and team effort. The sponsor has to provide a concrete and well described challenge to work with, a topic is not enough, and agree in the main deliverable. 3. Weve also included time slots based on a 1-day workshop. When preparing your workshop, insist that the list of participants include representatives of all the teams affected by the issue to be resolved. Want to know how to run a Design Thinking workshop? Design thinking is a highly iterative process, where insights from one activity often reframe the original opportunity. If you end up having the time to do them, they will be incredible team-building moments amongst the participants. ), Reverse brainstormingthis is where you focus on the causes of the problem rather than the solution, Rapid ideationeach person writes down as many ideas as possible within a set timeframe, Worst ideaask everyone to come up with their worst idea to solve the problem. This role can be filled by an in-house facilitator or an external or freelance facilitator who seeks to guide team members towards a common objective via the Design Thinking process., There are pros and cons to both internal and external facilitation., While an internal facilitator benefits from knowledge of the product and company and has established relationships with the team, they might struggle with objectivity, find it hard to build trust with the team, and avoid asking pointed questions., An external facilitator, on the other hand, is likely to remain detached from internal power struggles and find it easier to remain uninfluenced by existing relationships with the team. In general, workshops open with divergent thinking activities (brainstorming) before switching to convergent ones (prioritizations). Their process could move at a slower pace over a semester, linking baking with Design Thinking and they might create small cupcake prototypes as groups. One of our favorite icebreaker activities was taught to us by our colleagues at Valtech Stockholm: In teams of 2, each participant must draw their teammate in one minute without looking at their sheet of paper or raising their pen. Next, you need to create the optimal space for your workshop. So what next? There might be one person sourcing the ingredients, another baking the cake and another delivering it to our Persona. It does this with a human-centric, prototype-driven approach to problem solving and innovation., There are numerous benefits to running a Design Thinking workshop. 2. This is also a great opportunity to understand what good looks like to the different members on your team by requesting they bring inspiring solutions. As the facilitator of a Design Thinking workshop, you are responsible for helping teams challenge assumptions, discover actionable insights, and arrive at innovative outcomes. 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. This is also a good time for questions. 2. Ideation, innovation, and problem-solving: Generating as many ideas and potential solutions as possible. Bring a vision to life and into the hands of your customers, wherever they may be. But how can we make it easier for newbies to grasp the five stages of the design thinking process and see how they can apply them in their day-to-day work? You can find lots of information about. With clarity about the goals and priorities of the team, the final step of the workshop is to put the minimum experience requirements into writing. Time: Complex problem solving takes time. Another common error is to focus too heavily on presentations. Other roles on the team can include a marketing expert, a design expert, and a financial expert., Now that you know exactly what a Design Thinking workshop is, lets dive into how you run one, step by step!, Whats the goal of your workshop? Design thinking is a structured and collaborative way for humans to better serve other humans. It can last two hours, two days, or even a full weekit all depends on the context and the goals at hand. For example: Getting started, browsing the app, interacting with other users. You can learn about different ideation techniques in this comprehensive guide to ideation in Design Thinking. Running a successful Design Thinking workshop starts with knowing what you want. As such, the workshop agenda is more playbook than prescription the most important thing is knowing what type of deliverables you want to generate (ex. Do you sometimes feel that the good old pen and paper or MS Office toolkit and email leaves you struggling to stay on top of managing and delivering your workshop? . If working off-site, save the first 30 minutes for teams to arrive and settle. Design Thinking is a process or strategy for developing design concepts and solving problems that centers around the product's user and their needs. Who are we designing for? What ideation technique will the group be using today, and how does it work? You find the fun and snap! Weve covered. For the best outcomes, Design Thinking needs to be incorporated into every step of product development and problem-solving to see long-lasting effects., For those of you running a remote Design Thinking workshop, youll have a slightly different set of challenges to those hosting the in-person variant. While there are many ways to describe the process, weve broken it down into three steps: Prepare, Facilitate and Document. For details about the different steps and activities involved, see the Design Thinking process guide. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. Is it to uncover new opportunities, solve a specific user problem, or improve a product or feature? This might seem obvious by now, but in the excitement of the workshop, its easy to forget who this is really for! As well as finding a solution to the problem at hand, the process nurtures a working environment that values collaboration and communication and that focuses on creating solutions that meet the customers needs. By the end, youll be ready to take your colleagues (or clients) through the entire Design Thinking process, equipping them with the tools they need to come up with innovative strategies and ideas. As a facilitator, you could mention that this form of research could identify with our Empathize stage, as well as our Ideate stage. Ask your Design Thinkers how they enjoyed the workshop and what theyve learned. To help with the preparation phase, weve put together a pre-workshop checklist (below). Dedicate the last ten minutes or so to reflection and discussion. Step 2. Allowing the journey to be flexible. Theyll then gather feedback from the rest of the group. Common approaches in Design Thinking include empathy maps, storyboards, activity networks and cluster matrices. equity, awareness, engagements), The Business (ex. 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. Now well go through all the necessary steps for running a Design Thinking workshop. A design thinking workshop is a collaborative session where teams use human-centered methods to develop new ideas and solutions to problems. There's often not a whole lot of difference between outrageous and brilliant. Perhaps there is already a product in the prototype phase, and you use the tools from the Empathize stage to find out more from your users as they test the product. The define phase of your Design Thinking workshop might look something like this: The third phase in the Design Thinking process consists of ideationcoming up with ideas and potential solutions to solve the users problem. Without user personas, its very difficult to align on a shared perspective of the people who will experience the solution. In this module, we will consider a range of tools to help design thinkers understand problems: surveys, statistics, interviews, five whys and so whats, user roleplays, analogous empathy, empathy maps, customer journeys, and value chain analysis. The 5 phases of the design thinking process. Running a successful Design Thinking workshop means ensuring the team has everything they need to make informed decisions in real-time. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. They bring together a diverse group of people from different departments and provide a rare opportunity to get hands-on with the problem. Unlike a traditional presentation, the slides of a facilitation deck are designed to guide collaboration and generate discussion. After sharing the design context, invite participants to challenge and discuss the existing user personas. CareerFoundry is an online school for people looking to switch to a rewarding career in tech. Participants . If your activity requires it, you can also designate a person in each team who will be responsible for formalizing the group's work on a computer. To conclude, I wanted to give you one last little tip as a bonus. With general preparation out of the way, lets move on to phase two of our guide. The importance of Design Thinking being user-centered can never be mentioned enough! Bake two small cupcake versions to taste-test with our end-user. Whether brand new to the idea or a design professional, this way of thinking and collaborating, can often give us innovative, surprising and ground-breaking solutions to the challenges we face every day. Activitycreate an empathy map (10 minutes): Each participant divides their page into four quadrants: says, thinks, does, and feels. Depending on where the project stands within the Design Thinking process, workshops can be used to output anything from early strategic requirements to fully-functional prototypes. Eg: How can we increase traffic to our landing pages?, Well talk about how best to run remote workshops later in this article, but for in-person workshops, the location you choose will play a significant role in its success. As our process is a simple one, it makes sense for us to settle on a solution, and of course, as its a birthday, well have a deadline and party to deliver the cake to! 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. But how do you choose the right activity, and where do you get started when trying to build deeper team bonds? 10 Ground Rules . Display the ground rules so that they're visible to everyone. 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. Having gone through the users challenges in the previous exercise, the group is in a better position to go into more detail with the issue itself. The cross-functional collaboration will consistently bring about the most innovative and bring about the most effective solution to your users problem., 3. 14 Ground Rules for Workshops. Activitycreate mobile screens (15 minutes): For each step in the user journey, participants will sketch out the user interface (i.e. Do I have to be a designer to study this, and have any prior background knowledge? another person asks. The key is to deliver interesting, relevant content, followed by a practical exercise and then group discussion. 14 Ground Rules for Team Meetings . Design Thinking activities, such as empathy maps and user stories are a convenient way for organizing detailed user research. Activitycoming up with solutions (10 minutes): Having explored the opposite of what would be helpful to the user, it should now be easier to find potential solutions. At the moment, this is a rather broad question. You can do this remotely or in person. Theyll provide feedback, support, and advice as you build your new career. Stage Two Tools: Unpacking, Sensemaking, and Insights Ground rules are monitored by the whole group, for the group. Your email address will not be published. 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. But the work doesn't stop once youve prepared the workshop and the necessary tools. 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. Always one to evangelize and advocate open thinking when it comes to 'Digital Experience Design', and having played a gamut of roles from being a 'Multimedia Designer' since 2004, to being a . Important workshop ground rules require that everyone is engaged and on the same page. If youd like some examples of design thinking in the real world, check this out: 5 Game-Changing Examples of Design Thinking. 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 The point of view statement should include a specific user, a need, and an insight. Selecting the right design thinking steps and activities gets easier with experience. A Design Thinking workshop is a collaborative session that is focused on the five phases of Design Thinking. Get the group to spend another ten minutes brainstorming as many ideas as possible. 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