21 Workshop activities to process what you’ve learned with your product team
In my previous articles I talked about the recent UX Workshop on Workshops our UX team did to boost everyone’s confidence in proposing and doing more workshops. In preparing for that workshop I uncovered 122 unique workshop activities. I eventually divided that list into the following three sub categories.
- Workshops with actual users — 34 activities
- Process what you’ve learned with your product team — 21 activities (this article)
- Ideate with your product team — 44 activities
In this article I list out the 21 activities I found that are good to use when you need to process what you’ve learned with your product team.
Sources
The activities listed in this article came from the following sources:
- Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo
- 33 Activity Ideas for Remote UX Workshops by Jordan Bowman
- Nielson Norman Group’s Facilitating UX Workshops: Study Guide
Process what you’ve learned with your product team
You and your team, including but not limited to researchers, designers, engineers and product managers, need to process what you’ve observed and learned from other research that’s been done. By doing this as a group you can see perspectives you hadn’t considered and build a better understanding faster than you can do on your own. Doing this up front in a project will make the rest of the software process go smoother because you will have a stronger common understanding as a foundation.
Sub-categories of activities
- Review artifacts from user workshops and research — 1 activity
- The user — 4 activities
- The user’s job, process or environment — 11 activities
- The user’s problems and wins — 7 activities
- Experience it — 1 activity
Review artifacts from user workshops and research — 1 activity
1.1 — Affinity Map
Post up everyones observations or ideas about any aspect of the user, the topic or the problem at hand and then group them and discuss emerging groupings and patterns.
The user — 4 activities
2.1 — Empathy Map
Draw a face and fill in the following categories — hearing, seeing, saying, doing and feeling — but have the actual users fill it in for themselves.
2.2 — Pain-Gain Map
Identify a person (themselves when doing with actual users) or job title, on the board make two columns, pains and gains. Now have the group list all the pains this person may go through and all the gains they may receive.
2.3 — Context Map
Map these specific external forces on an organization, individual, situation, job title or product: political factors, economic climate, trends, technology factors, customer needs and uncertainties.
2.4 — Spectrum Mapping
Decide on a topic, then ask the participants to post up stickies with their opinions on the topic. When everyone has posted, then as a group rearrange all the post-its to the left and right of the topic in a what you perceive is its spectrum order, then discuss. You will see the size, scope and spectrum of opinions.
The user’s job, process or environment — 11 activities
3.1 — Heart, Hand, Mind
Take an issue, product or course of action and ask the participants to post-up under three headings: What makes it emotionally engaging? What makes it tangible and practical? What makes it logical and sensible? Then discuss.
2.3 — Context Map
Map these specific external forces on an organization, individual, situation, job title or product: political factors, economic climate, trends, technology factors, customer needs and uncertainties.
3.2 — Post the Path
Often groups have undocumented processes or some individuals do things differently than others in the group. Identify a process and have the participants post up the process together and discuss areas of difference, confusion or lack of details.
3.3— Staple Yourself to Something
Pick an object with the group that relates to their job (like a medical claim, resume or other document), then have the group draw out the big steps and small steps the object goes through until it reaches its successful destination.
3.4 — Journey Mapping
Have your users create their own journey map. A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal. Includes an actor, scenario + expectations, journey phases, actions, mindsets, emotions and opportunities.
3.5 — Experience Mapping
Have your users create their own experience map. Experience maps are the parent to a journey map, they are more generalized and not tied to a specific product or service. They typically have 4 swim-lanes: phases, actions, thoughts and mindsets/emotions. Experience maps offer a general human perspective, not specific to a particular user type or product and depicts events in chronological order.
3.6 — Service Blueprinting
Have your users create their own service blueprint. Service blueprints are part two of journey maps and visualize the relationships between different service components like people, props and processes. A service blueprint is tied to a specific service and has 4 swim-lanes: customer actions, frontstage actions, backstage actions and support processes.
3.7 — The Virtuous Cycle
Pick a process that warrants repeating, such as the customer experience, knowledge capture and creation, or strategic planning. Black box the current process on the board so the discussion focuses on what is happening outside the box. Ask the group what happens before the process and after, post that on the board. Now draw a line connecting the end to the beginning and discuss what needs to happen to get back and start again.
3.8 — Business Model Canvas
Have your users draw their business model canvas on the board, have them draw themselves as the business not the actual business they work for. Business model canvas includes these sections: key partners, key activities, key resources, value props, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structure, revenue streams.
3.9 — Storyboarding
As a group draw out a specific user scenario or story in sequential panels like a comic book, typically done in eight panels. Can also be done individually or in teams, then discuss.
3.10 — Concept Map
Like a mind map, start with goal or concept in middle and use lines, symbols, color, images and words to build nodes in a hierarchy. Either done as a group or individually then discuss.
The user’s problems and wins — 7 activities
4.1 — Speedboat
Draw a speedboat on the board moving fast through the water with anchors underneath it. The boat represents the product, service or goal under discussion. Now have participants post-up on the different parts of the image, things on the anchor are things that are holding the product up, things in the engine are speeding it up. The visual metaphor helps the team identify and discuss the landscape quicker.
4.2 — Fishbone Diagram
Write a statement that explains exactly what the problem is, including how and when it occurs, at the fish’s head. Then draw broad categories as lines, no more than 10, coming out of the fish’s back like: users, software, communication and so on. Then draw more bones off of those 10 that are individual causes. You’ll get to the root causes.
4.3 — Five Why’s
Begin with a broad question about why the problem has occurred, then try to answer it. After that then ask why that first answer happened and keep going five layers deep asking why each time, the last layer is likely the root cause of the problem.
4.4 — Draw the Problem
Every participant draws the problem as they would explain it to a peer. Then compare and contrast everyone’s drawings. Visualizing is critical, it’s ok if they create more metaphorical drawings.
3.1 — Heart, Hand, Mind
Take an issue, product or course of action and ask the participants to post-up under three headings: What makes it emotionally engaging? What makes it tangible and practical? What makes it logical and sensible? Then discuss.
4.6 — Understanding Chain
List out all the audiences involved with the problem space. Brainstorm as many questions as the group can for each of those audiences. Now map those questions to one or more story sequences like situation, complication, or resolution. The activity will help the group focus in on the hardest and most important questions they need answered.
2.4 — Spectrum Mapping
Decide on a topic, then ask the participants to post up stickies with their opinions on the topic. When everyone has posted, then as a group rearrange all the post-its to the left and right of the topic in a what you perceive is its spectrum order, then discuss. You will see the size, scope and spectrum of opinions.
Experience it — 1 activity
5.1 — Bodystorming
First go out and observe, if you are making software for a hospital then go do your normal work at an actual hospital. Second, try it out, make props and prototypes to physically act out the user’s experience there in the actual location. Third, reflect on what happens and why.
More on UX workshops
This article is part of a series of articles I’ve written on UX workshops.
Unlocking the power of UX workshops: a comprehensive guide to purpose, benefits, and construction
Unlocking creativity: a deep dive into our two-day UX workshop on workshops
