How Design Studio workshop can contribute to a design-driven culture? A step-by-step guide, scheduling formulas, and a workshop program template.
What is the “Design Studio”?
The Design Studio workshop is based on one of the most widely adopted Design Thinking methods. This method builds on traditional brainstorming, rapid solution designs and evaluation, ideation, feedback, and analysis. Best applied when there’s a good understanding of a problem (or set of problems) and a range of concept solutions need to be generated.
You can learn more about the Design Studio method from the Nielsen Norman Group
Why Design Studio?
Design Studio is a collaborative design process — when successfully adopted it will foster an environment that promotes a quick and iterative generation of numerous design solutions, rapid evaluation, and openly sharing of ideas, feedback, analysis, and collaboration.
How Design Studio workshop can contribute to a design-driven culture?
Design Studio workshops are designed to bring teams together in a fun and creative way. Collaboration leads to solid concepts by the end of these immersive sessions, with a shared sense of ownership for the project outcome; all while participants develop greater understanding and trust amongst one another as they surface important requirements from key stakeholders throughout their session.
The workshop consists of 4 parts
Knowledge sharing
Start with the intro to go over the program and any intros amongst participants. Presentation and discussion of research findings, personas, scenarios, design goals, design principles, etc…
Sketch, Present, Critique, and Iterate
3 iterative cycles (or more if necessary) in which participants will sketch, present, and evaluate potential solutions for a given persona, scenario, and goal.
Review
Discussion of common patterns, components, principles, next action, or whatever else came up in the session.
Afterward
Scan and share all the sketches with your design team to review the concepts against scenarios and refine them.
Where to start?
- Make sure to fully understand (research) the problem(s) you are trying to solve.
- Select a designated person(s) within your organization/team to prepare research, personas, scenarios, business, and user goals. This is needed during Knowledge Sharing (see below).
- Decide on your teams and how you are going to conduct the workshop. Who’s going to facilitate. Who to invite as participants.
- Gather your teams in the same room with plenty of whiteboard and wall space and start your session.
What will you need?
- Room with plenty of wall space
- Timer
- 6-ups sketch paper — download 6-up storyboard template
- 1-up sketch paper — download 1-up storyboard template
- Black markers for sketching
- Color markers for critique or post-its (optional)
- Masking tape to hang sketches on the wall (optional)
- Name tags (optional)
- Large display (TV) or projector (optional)
- Printer
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Who should participate?
- Designers, developers, product managers, SMEs, clients, or anyone you would want to gain insights from.
Remember — the Design Studio workshop is a powerful way to introduce product managers, developers, sales, and leadership teams to the design process. It’s about getting everyone on the same page with what design thinking is and how it applies in their organization.
- An ideal number of total participants is 12 people. You will need to break out into groups of 3-4.
TIP: Remember, more people require more time.
How is it done?
Prep
- Build a participants list and send out invites. Your participants should be diverse professionally, in their level of experience, and background. This helps avoid group-think and bring different POVs.
- Assign participants to groups. Make sure to have a good mix per group. Avoid pairing within a group (if possible). For example, don't place 2 engineers in the same group.
- Create a “Workshop Program” and distribute it to all attendees. Download Design Studio Workshop Program
- Come up with fun titles to use on the name tag. This little fun exercise at the start of the workshop will give you a good idea of how each participant perceives themselves. My favorite set: Innovator, Instigator, Creative Genius, Doctor Who.
How long should the workshop be?
This is where the number of participants plays a major role. Try to fit into 1 day when possible.
The following schedule outline helps calculate the time needed. Use it along with this formula:
60 min intro + 5 min sketch + (7 min present and critique X number of participants) + 5 min pair-up + 10 min sketch + (10 min present and critique x number of pairs) + 5 min group + 15 min sketch + (15 min present and critique x number of groups) + 60 min review = required time w/o breaks
Present Research (30–60 minutes)
At the start of the session present your research findings (scenarios, personas, and goals), explain the rules, and expected outcomes.
Iteration 1 (Individuals)
- Sketch (5 minutes)
Each participant sketches multiple solutions using 6-ups sketch papers in a short amount of time. - Present (2 minutes per participant)
Hang all sketches on the wall and ask each participant to quickly (2 minutes) present their solutions. - Critique (5 minutes per participant)
Participants provide constructing critique/feedback. Encourage people to make notes directly on the sketches using different color markers or post-its. Avoid problem-solving during the critique and remember the focus is not to redesign someone’s work but rather bring it back to the scenario, personas, goals, and analyzing the merits of the proposed solution.
Iteration 2 (Pairs)
- Pair up individual participants (5 minutes)
Pair participants within the same group if possible. If you have an odd number of people add to one of the pairs and add additional time to presentation and critique. - Sketch (10 minutes)
1 to 2 solutions per pair using 1-up sketch paper with more details. Solutions should be based on revisions to previous solutions and feedback. Pairs can borrow concepts from the previous round and others. - Present (2 minutes per pair)
Pair presents their solutions. Allow 1 extra minute if a pair has extra participants. - Critique (8 minutes per pair)
Participants provide feedback. Allow 2 extra minutes if a pair has extra participants.
Iteration 3 (Groups)
- Individuals gather into groups (5 minutes)
- Sketch (15 minutes)
1 solution per team using 1-up sketch paper with even more details. Solutions should be based on the previous rounds and feedback. Groups can borrow concepts from previous solutions and others. - Present (3 minutes per group)
The team presents its solution. - Critique (12 minutes per group)
Participants provide feedback.
The Review (30–60 minutes)
- When all the key scenarios are completed ask participants to identify and discuss any common themes, patterns, and components that have emerged during the exercise.
- Discuss and document any open questions and assumptions.
With this schedule and 12 participants, my workshop would require 1 working day including lunch and breaks.
60 + 5 + (7 x 12) + 5 + 10 + (10 x 6) + 5 + 15 + (15 x 3) + 60
= 5.82 hours of required time without breaks
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