Distributed Ideation Tips
Lessons from running fully remote design brainstorms at Mailchimp
On a recent project, we (Holly Tiwari & Mike Davis) facilitated 4 brainstorm sessions to collect diverse ideas from members of stakeholder teams distributed across multiple locations.
Traditional design brainstorms involve folks being co-located in one room together to sketch on physical paper, breaking into small groups to discuss, then coming back together as a whole group to share. We thought this would be a good opportunity to attempt ideation sessions with all participants fully distributed to equalize the experience and stress test our collaboration tools (Zoom, Miro, and Slack).
We’re sharing these tips to encourage you to try this format on your team and help make your sessions more successful than ours. 🙃
Prepping for the session
Do more work upfront so your participants have to do less work in the session. We can’t emphasize the importance of this enough — it’s tedious, but well worth it.
Identify a co-facilitator
It’s helpful to have a partner who knows your goals for the session to support your efforts to keep things on track. Supporting tasks include time cop, joining a small group to keep conversation going, affinity map helper, or taking notes on your facilitation skills so you can improve your next session.
Set expectations in the calendar event
No need to go too deep into the specific prompt, but clarify why the participant is invited, the topic you’re focusing on, and required materials. Emphasize that this is a fully remote ideation session.
Time it out
Meetings are expensive. Value everyone’s time by thinking through the scheduling details. Anticipate where things may run over and what you might do to mitigate that. Reserve 5 min at the end to wrap up and clarify next steps.
Tip: uploading stickies into Miro takes ~7 min, so a Crazy 8’s = 15 min (8 min sketching + 7 min to get into Miro)
Prep the Miro board
- Include background info for context
- Assign each participant their own frame for posting their ideas (repeat the prompt statement on each frame for easy reference)
- Break up people into small groups ahead of time
- Create a large frame for affinity mapping ideas
Invite to Miro
Add participants to the Miro board ahead of the meeting. There is no need for a “big reveal” at the start of the meeting.
Create breakout Zoom rooms for small group discussions
If your workshop requires breaking out into smaller groups for discussion, you can achieve this by enabling the “breakout room” feature for your account under Settings > Meeting > In Meeting (Advanced). Then watch this video for details on running breakout sessions.
During your session, clearly list who is in each group. When it comes time to break up, make it clear to the participants the specific time they are expected to rejoin the primary meeting room. It’s also helpful to start a timer in the shared Miro board so that everyone sees how much time is remaining.
If you have a co-facilitator, it’s a good idea to split up into separate rooms to field any questions that may come up. If you’re facilitating solo, plan to hop between rooms to make sure everything is going smoothly. Give the groups a clear way to reach out with questions when you’re not with them.
During the session
Start with logistics + agenda
Make sure everyone has the required tools and is clear on what’s happening before jumping in.
Intros
If not everyone in the session works on the same team, do a round of intros after reviewing logistics and the agenda. Ask participants to turn on their videos!
Remember who is in the room 😅
When facilitating and sharing your screen, Zoom makes it hard to see all participants at once and who is muting/unmuting themselves.
Call on people
As the facilitator, actively call on people to speak instead of passively asking “who wants to start?” Jumping in to speak first is even more awkward when on a video call. Also, everyone sees the list of Zoom participants in a different order so it’s not possible for everyone to “go around the room” in the same order when introducing themselves or presenting ideas.
Hide cursors
When facilitating and sharing your screen, hide cursors so it’s not distracting.
Zoom in 🔎
Leave your shared screen focused on the prompt during sketching for participants to reference
Zoom in on the area of focus (especially when people are presenting their ideas) to help the group follow along. Make it larger than you would normally, because in Zoom the list of participants down the side makes the actual content smaller than usual.
Miro timer
The Miro timer appears simultaneously on everyone’s Miro board, which is great for heads down sketching portions so participants are aware of how much time is remaining. (See timer icon in bottom left of Miro.)
Play music
Upbeat instrumental music helps avoid awkward silence during silent brainstorming or sketching, and when everyone is importing their stickies to Miro. Here’s a great playlist.
so participants can hear your music.
Miro voting add-on
The voting add-on in Miro works just like traditional dot voting, with the added bonus that votes are anonymous and hidden until the end. Set the time (we recommend 2–3 min), number of votes per person, and you’re off.
Miro sticky recognition
Participants should still sketch on physical sticky notes despite being distributed. (Don’t forget to include these items in the calendar invite so folks come prepared.) To quickly get IRL sketches into Miro, use their handy sticky recognition feature.
Review this tool with participants during your session’s intro / logistics set up. We have step-by-step instructions documented here.
Miro iPad app
One of our sessions involved groups of 3–4 people working together to sketch a workflow. Every designer at Mailchimp has an iPad Pro, so ahead of the session we asked one designer per group to volunteer as their group’s sketching lead.
Tip: have one group member write captions for each sketch.
After the session
Celebrate
Enjoy that facilitation high and grab some chocolate covered almonds — you did it!
Debrief
Sync up with your co-facilitator to review what went well and opportunities to improve immediately following the session. Logistics notes are especially important to capture while it’s fresh in your mind.
Share results & next steps
Hopefully you ended your session by clarifying next steps with participants. It’s also a good idea to restate this in a more public forum (Slack or email) to thank participants for their time and provide visibility for the broader team/stakeholders.
and to ensure they see your post 😜
Synthesize
Identify common ideas or themes that came out of your session. If you didn’t include a team voting component, sync with your co-facilitator to align on which concepts to move forward with. Go forth and conquer with all the new great ideas you’re working with!
Know tips we missed?
Please share in the comments! Or come join the fun — we’re hiring.
