Design Thinking looks at the customer's perspective from the start to the end of an experience. In our presentation at the beginning of the workshop, we outline some ways in which we might prototype our cake; As we are going for the simplest options in our workshop, we have suggested that the teams draw visual representations, adding possible recipe ingredients and flavors which they will then present to the end-user for testing. If youre conducting a Design Thinking workshop with clients or colleagues from other departments, youll need to get everybody up to speed on what Design Thinking actually is. As the North star of the design, its best to align on the statement as early as possible. 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. 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. On average, spend three hours of preparation for each hour of workshop. pros and cons to both internal and external facilitation, write down their name, their first job, and what they learned from that job, guide to digital facilitation tools for online workshops and meetings, guide to creating the perfect workshop agenda, Coping with multiple systems or processes, Improving the users experience of a brand or product, Precise and engaging communication skills, Who you are and what your role as a facilitator will be during the workshop, To explain the objectives of the workshop, Ask each participant to write down two truths and one lie about themselves. While physical whiteboards are the most engaging, excellent digital solutions are now available. 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.. 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. What did the team learn? Sometimes the best sources of inspiration connect seemingly unrelated industries. For example, in these work sessions, respecting the duration of each activity is essential. 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. Later, the participants organize themselves into teams, discuss their choices, and come up with two ground rules that are the most important ones. In phase one, we went through some general pointers to consider when devising the workshop agenda. Want to know how to run a Design Thinking workshop? Common approaches in Design Thinking include empathy maps, storyboards, activity networks and cluster matrices. Or align on specific requirements? If someone falls behind and doesn't mention it, it isn't conducive to the team. Ready to run an unforgettable Design Thinking workshop? As a group, youll now decide on a winning approach. Discuss the results of preparatory UX research, technical audits, and other data gathered in preparation. We ask the group to consider different types of cake to demonstrate the scale of our problem: a cupcake, a birthday cake and a wedding cake. 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. Where did the insights come from? Allowing the journey to be flexible. Product design workshops are an opportunity for a team to untangle a problem together by going through a series of group exercises designed to get to a specific outcome. If time permits, allow 15-20 minutes at the start of every day for icebreaker activities or energizing moments. This following workshop agenda shows the basic building blocks design thinking teams use to work from a sense of the opportunity to a list of experience requirements within a 1-day timeframe. signups, completions, reviews), The Brand (ex. Further down, youll find more information to help you with each checklist item. Weve also included time slots based on a 1-day workshop. Limit the number of ground rules to 12. Starting with these simple examples of different cakes is a great way to achieve this. For more complex problems, we might revisit previous stages, and create further prototypes using our deeper understanding. As the facilitator of a Design Thinking workshop, you are responsible for helping teams challenge assumptions, discover actionable insights, and arrive at innovative outcomes. Weve covered. For this example, well use the worst possible idea technique followed by a simple brainstorm. Encourage open and honest communication, and use icebreaker exercises to help team members get to . We are designing our approach to creative thinking by going through a proven process in a mindful and self-reflexive way in order to find better solutions. Remind the group to keep coming back to the Empathy part of the Design Thinking process and use empathy maps and user stories as practical ways to keep the user at the center of the session. The benefits of Design Thinking. Provide them with some starter questions, such as: How would you describe your most recent experience with online dating? First, lets explore the problem at the heart of this workshop design, which is baking a cake! Do I have to be a designer to study this, and have any prior background knowledge? another person asks. Together, these steps capture the breadth of content and considerations involved in running an effective workshop. We therefore synthesized all of the key information on a Research Wall that we built on Miro in the form of a SWOT matrix, as well as in a comprehensive project checklist. Activitydecide on a winning approach (10 minutes): Once the user testing round is complete, stick all design solutions up on the wall. This can be a brief presentation covering the following points: By now, youve set the scene and put everybody at ease. 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 Well here are our handpicked tips. While these sources of insight are highly project specific, consider the following four areas as a starting point. Are you ready to get started? When designing a workshop, or series of workshops for participants- you might suggest that their empathize stage involves designing a cake for someone outside of the workshop group. 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). In the following sections, youll see how the Introduction to Design Thinking workshop explores each stage of the design process through the analogy of baking a cake. you might ask yourself. These workshops constitute several activities that provide a solid ground for co-creation, collaboration, and team effort. You find the fun and snap! There's often not a whole lot of difference between outrageous and brilliant. In the simplest definition, design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. Most often, these are conducted in person, but you can certainly adapt and conduct a remote Design Thinking workshop. It is relatively affordable, perhaps a mid-range cost if its for a milestone birthday, or a low-cost supermarket purchase for a low-key, informal celebration. Was there anything that surprised them? Activitycreate an empathy map (10 minutes): Each participant divides their page into four quadrants: says, thinks, does, and feels. Workshop facilitation is an important skill for any designer, but it can be tricky to master. The simplest way to introduce the Empathize stage is often by reminding everyone that design thinking is human-centered and that we are always seeking to understand our end users needs. Sharing user journey maps, reflection and discussion (10 minutes): At the end of the ideation phase, put ten minutes aside for presenting and reflecting on all the user journey maps created. When tackling this somewhat tricky task, there are two golden rules to bear in mind: It might be tempting to cram in as much as possible, but the workshop will just end up feeling rushedwhich is not conducive to creativity! 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. Do they need updating or even overhauling altogether?, Although the general challenge has already been identified, nows the time to get down to specifics. 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. If you only do one thing, be over-prepared! Activitycreate mobile screens (15 minutes): For each step in the user journey, participants will sketch out the user interface (i.e. Design Thinking is a vital framework in the modern business ecosystem. Create a crossfunctional team of allies who can help you advertise the process and build buy-in for your recommendations. It uses a divergent approach of Empathize -Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test, to design a solution focused towards creating a preferred customer experience. Activityworst possible idea (10 minutes): Using the worst possible idea technique, ask the group to spend around ten minutes coming up with anti-solutions to the problem theyre trying to solve. We then can use our gathered insights that analyze the effectiveness of our chosen prototypes and then refine the idea accordingly. 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? This workshop has been constructed with the simplest solutions in mind, and for the empathize phase, we team people up as pairs and set them the task of interviewing one another about their birthday plans. Theyll provide feedback, support, and advice as you build your new career. 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. Participants . By following the workshop template, youll find a heap of tips and tricks for teaching design thinking to a new group. Your email address will not be published. In the second part of the ideation phase, youll get your participants to compile a series of user actions into a timeline. Card sorting and mapping activities help teams prioritize the large quantities of competing goals common for human centered design. The goal of this time is to generate dozens of relevant user stories for each persona. Using empathy maps and role-playing, encourage the group to get into the shoes of their target user. The great thing about these exercises is that you have the freedom to expand them to work with your audience and how best suits their needs. By leveraging our full spectrum strategy, design, and technology capabilities, we deliver game-changing outcomes for our clients around the world. Well finish this exercise with a selection of ideas to bring through and prototype. Use the ground rules to check on and improve the quality of the group's . However, Design Thinking is perhaps most commonly used when a problem cannot be solved using traditional methods, and needs to be approached from a more creative or innovative angle. Its also an effective way to engage participants and get them thinking about user needs, budgets, resources and other vital elements of the design thinking process. By keeping in mind what, why and how for each Design Thinking stage and contextualizing the topic into something relatable, we can give clarity on Design Thinking and deliver it as simply as a piece of cake. Follow our actionable guide for best practices, tips, and techniques, as well as easy-to-follow steps to guarantee the success of your first session. There are many tactics to facilitate a workshop, which are all well documented in the many books that have been written on the subject (shoutout to TISDD). All these benefits aside, Design Thinking workshops are incredibly fun and engaging. To ensure your remote Design Thinking workshop runs as smoothly as possible, its important to keep in mind the following best practices., We hope our guide to running a Design Thinking workshop has answered all your burning questions about mastering this process and has taken the fear out of running your first one. Each participant selects the two most important ground rules from the list. Before we move into our second exercise, its often useful to discuss and explain who our Stakeholders are. Are we designing how we think?, one person asks. user stories, concept sketches or working prototypes) and work back from there. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. Given the cross-functional nature of workshops, its often best to bring both executive summaries and raw data to workshops. 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. To conclude, I wanted to give you one last little tip as a bonus. What could have gone better? If you do not have recent or robust user personas, consider drafting a set in advance it is much faster to challenge and change user personas during the workshop than build them from scratch. If teaching design thinking online, you may wish to. Despite . We then made these documents available to workshop participants, so that everyone had the same level of knowledge at the beginning of the week. Ideally, youll have a separate table for all the materials and equipment (more on that in step three!). We have already mentioned that the people eating the cake would be called our end users. These visualizations not only help teams describe ideas, but also interpret data and make informed decisions. Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools to make your life easier when you need to facilitate a meeting and lead workshops. She has spent the last seven years working in tech startups, immersed in the world of UX and design thinking. Don't forget to take photos of the material produced as you go along, and if your workshop contains pitches, record them so that you can remember them if necessary. Understanding your end users needs is the first step towards innovationand thats the first message youll deliver in your Design Thinking workshop. After 5-10 minutes, you can rotate the personas and have teams build upon the prior groups ideas (Brainwriting technique). On the contrary! With your objectives in mind, you can begin the planning process. For example: A busy, middle-aged professional needs an easy way of meeting like-minded people in the local area. Activityadd functionality to mobile screens (15 minutes): Now participants will turn their sketches into low-fidelity paper prototypes by adding functionality. A good workshop facilitator must know how to get the word out within the company about. This is because it opens up a challenge to a more diverse range of experiences, skill sets, and knowledge bases. Design Thinking workshops are gaining popularity due to being interesting as well as informative and fun. To conclude, I wanted to give you one last little tip as a bonus. Maximum: 50 . The 5 phases of the design thinking process. What is a meaningful problem statement? 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. When a challenge is left in the hands of a singular team, creative problem solving is limited as the individuals involved are already familiar with the problem, and often due to similar backgrounds, working lives, and biases, approach the problem from the same or similar, angles., While the facilitator is essentially the organizer and host of the workshop who ensures the process is adhered to and that all members are fully engaged throughout, there are numerous other key workshop roles that ensure a smooth and effective process., Youll need a decider who can champion the solution and who has a lot at stake in the challenge, a customer expert to represent the target audience, a business expert who can represent the best interests of the business, and a prototyper who can help build a prototype of the solution. You can also include any good photos you took of the workshop. A Design Thinking workshop should be largely activity-based; your participants need to be hands-on and engaged. If working with several personas, consider breaking out into smaller groups focused on one persona. In this post, well share our favorite online tools you can use to make your job as a facilitator easier. And we came to the following conclusion: Being a good workshop facilitator is like being made out of bamboo. For example: The step browses through potential matches could be propelled by the user goal of wanting to meet new people. Make sure to include lots of activities, be realistic with your time planning, and allow plenty of time for breaks, spontaneity, free-flowing discussion, and creativity., Youll probably want to allow approximately one hour for each section of the workshop, with a generous slot dedicated to reflection and debriefing when the activities are over., To ensure maximum creativity, youll be going back to basics for your Design Thinking workshop. Participants should come away with an understanding of how Design Thinking can be used in the real world, so explain what would usually happen nextturning paper prototypes into wireframes and, eventually, clickable prototypes to be tested on real users, for example. As a facilitator, we should ensure that everyone comes away from the workshop feeling empowered, with more clarity on what Design Thinking means, and how they can apply the methods to real-life projects. Take a user-centered approach and ask your participants for feedback. As a designer, you might hold a Design Thinking workshop with your direct team in order to tackle a tough design challenge youve been struggling with. Its very useful for participants to understand exactly what is meant by a prototype, and that it is not a near-finished product. A pain-point could be that they dont find any suitable matches in the local area. We'll get into what these look like in practice a little later on, but first let's take a look at what they mean in theory and why they're important to the Design Thinking process . Select a program, get paired with an expert mentor and tutor, and become a job-ready designer, developer, or analyst from scratch, or your money back. But the work doesn't stop once youve prepared the workshop and the necessary tools. After 5 minutes, share results among the group. Join the 100,000+ facilitators using SessionLab. A Design Thinking workshop is a collaborative session that is focused on the five phases of Design Thinking. One of the reasons for its popularity is, Join the 100.000 facilitators using SessionLab, 2022 TrainedOn O Voolu tn 20a, Tallinn, 10918 Tallinn, Estonia support@sessionlab.com. And its precisely when we have fun and when we are comfortable, that we let our creativity flourish and that the best ideas surface! The job's a game!. It is important to . Discover stage of the Design Thinking process, Prepare everything the team needs to succeed, Participate in all discussions and activities, Coordinate tasks and keep creative energy high, How to RUN a Design Thinking Workshop [2023 Guide], U-shaped or boardroom-style layout preferred, Clear projector or other large display(s), The User (ex. In our design thinking for beginners guide, we explore how you can introduce design thinking by asking a group to solve the simple challenge of baking a cake. Continuing with the example of LoveFoundry, our imaginary online dating service, lets consider how you might construct the empathise phase. 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. Common design thinking activities include user stories, user journey maps, sketching, storyboards and paper prototypes. Summaries can be shared early in the session to quickly level-set, while raw data can be referenced during activities or decision making. These might include: This phase can also include a brief retrospective. 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. Obviously, this ratio can be adapted according to the complexity and your level of familiarity with the subject. You can learn all about, Activitycraft a point of view (10 minutes): Based on their empathy maps from the empathise phase, ask participants to create a point of view statement. However, if youre new to the practice, getting to grips with everything you need to know, not to mention running your first Design Thinking workshop, can be nothing short of terrifying.. When you use Design Thinking methodology in a co-creation workshop, its undeniable that being well-prepared is essential to ensure its success. In pairs, they can continue to fill in any blanks with their partner when creating Personas in order to get a more rounded view of their end-user. Another common error is to focus too heavily on presentations. 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. 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. 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. It serves as a rudder for cross functional teams working on complex projects, and takes 3 5 days to complete. It may involve employees from different departments coming together to tackle a company-wide problem or individuals from the same team focusing on a department-specific challenge., A workshop that promotes cross-collaboration between teams, and which contains individuals with a wide range of specializations, will bring the most innovative and effective results to a Design Thinking workshop. If you end up having the time to do them, they will be incredible team-building moments amongst the participants. Lets get started. For example, a cupcake is designed to be eaten by one person, a low-cost treat that doesnt warrant a special occasion. A car needs a good driver who has set of driving know-how, do's and dont's of the traffic rules and good anticipation of the roads. Whatever the context, be clear on what the workshop should achieve. Design thinking is mostly celebrated as a set of step-by-step framework with tools incorporated within each step. Ready to run a great workshop? 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