Unlocking creativity: a deep dive into our two-day UX workshop on workshops
Our UX team had been fully remote since covid started and we only got to see each other in person about once a year. This particular year we wanted to make the most of that time, and at the same time we also wanted to improve everyone’s confidence and skills in conducting UX workshops.
Our goals for the training
Goal 1 — Spend as much time interacting with each other as possible
We had fifteen total members on our UX team, but our challenge had been that each individual was divided among our company’s several different product teams and we are all remote — so even though we’re technically all on the same UX team we rarely interact with each other. With only two days to give our UX team time to be around each other, that meant the training needed to have them interacting as much as possible.
Goal 2 — Increase our confidence running workshops
Each designer and researcher on our UX team had many opportunities to propose and run workshops within our product organization, but only a few of them actually do. Our theory was that if everyone had fun and memorable experiences running and participating in workshops, in a low stress setting, then their confidence proposing and running workshops with their product teams would be higher.
Goal 3 — Doing is better than listening to lectures
We wanted our team members to be able to say that they’d actually participated in real workshops and that they’d actually ran workshops instead of saying they listened to experts talk about running workshops or read a book on the topic. We knew that their confidence in proposing and conducting workshops would come from actually having done them.
Goal 4 — Learn and practice a bunch of new activities
Workshops are made up of many different kinds of workshop activities and many of our team members have only done a handful of workshop activities in their career. That meant that up until now most of them had only ever proposed one or two activities to their product teams, because those were the activities they were familiar with. There are actually hundreds of workshop activities out there and to only stick to one or two activities is missing out on a lot. Our two day workshop had to get everyone outside of their comfort zone and expose them to as many new and interesting activities as possible.
How we decided which activities to do
When we were putting together this workshop on workshops, choosing which activities to do was actually more difficult then we thought it would be. In our research we had found 122 different workshop activities, which was a lot for us, and even more complicated was the fact that no two activities were the same. All 122 activities were very nuanced and specific. That meant there were far too many activities to do them all and the activities were far too different to just pick some at random.
At first we tried categorizing the activities by what the activity actually did and what it actually produced, but that fell apart pretty quickly because what they did was still too varied. The problem we kept running into was why, why do the activity in the first place? We realized that the activities needed to have a problem they were trying to solve to make sense.
We then thought of all the problems we had solved with workshops at our company up to this point and that started to give us more clarity. We boiled down our reasons for workshops to three main objectives.
- Workshops with actual users
- Process what you’ve learned with your product team
- Ideate with your product team
Now that we had these three categories we could then go through the 122 activities and pick the ones that fit into each of those three categories. We successfully narrowed the 122 activities down to the following list.
Workshops with actual users — 34 activities
Process what you’ve learned with your product team — 21 activities
Ideate with your product team — 44 activities
With the 122 activities narrowed down we simply needed to pick a couple from each of the three categories and we would have a list for the two day workshop on workshops. We decided to go with the activities that we were confident none of us had done before and the activities that seemed to be both fun and useful. That left us with the following list.
Descriptions of each of the following activities can be found in separate stories, follow the links below to read more about each individual activity
- Trading Cards
- The Aliens Have Landed
- Zombie Cats
- Business Model Canvas
Process what you’ve learned with your product team
- Speedboat
- Heart, Hand, Mind
- Brainwriting / Braindrawing
- NUF Test
- Heuristic Ideation Technique
- Cover Story
- Kano Model
- Impact / Effort
What we did each day
One of the primary goals of our workshop on workshops was to expose everyone to as many new workshop activities as possible, so we came up with a repeatable format for each activity that we used as a guide for the two days.
Putting actual times to our plan, we had fifteen minutes of instructions, sixty minutes of actual workshop time and fifteen minutes of discussion afterward — so one activity would take roughly an hour and a half.
15 minutes of instruction
60 minutes of doing an activity
15 minutes of discussion afterward
We figured we could expose everyone to somewhere between five and seven activities a day during the two days.
Prep—Divide the larger group into smaller groups
We had fifteen people on our UX team participating in our workshop which was too many people to have on one activity at a time. Having too many people on one activity would dilute the individual’s experience and give some people a chance to fade into the background and avoid participating — so we needed to split everyone up.
At the beginning of each day we divided the fifteen participants into three small teams of five people each.
Five seemed like the right amount, three people per team wouldn’t have been enough opinions at the table and more than five people per team would have meant that some people wouldn’t really contribute.
We also had those small teams of five stay together for the whole day.
Keeping the team together for the whole day helped make sure everyone had a chance to be the facilitator at least once or twice and it also gave the team a chance to see what it was like to begin to gel as a group in a workshop.
Step 1 — Activity instructions
We wanted everyone to be able to jump right into the activity once the activity started and not spend that time debating or trying to figure out what to do. We also wanted everyone to have the same understanding of the activity before they started, so we went over the activity instructions as a group beforehand.
A lot of the activities we used came from the Gamestorming book by Dave Gray. We displayed the kindle version of the book on the conference room screen for everyone to look at together. Everyone was also given their own copy of the book at the beginning of the workshop so they could follow along on their own and get used to using the book for reference.
With the activity on the screen I would then read it’s full description to the group and tell them where I personally would interpret or alter the directions given. I also made it a point to invite everyone to debate my interpretations so that we could hash things out before they began.
Something interesting that occurred is that as we did more and more activities, we found that this reading time got shorter and shorter because everyone started picking up on the activity concepts faster and they were eager to just jump right in and get going.
Step 2 — Each group picked a facilitator
Another purpose of our workshop was to give each designer and each researcher more experience running workshops. We believed that running workshops was something that you could get better at simply by doing it. We found that once you are responsible for getting a group through an activity together a lot of the learning to lead an activity came naturally and quickly. Also, because we were all there to learn together the rest of the team helped and supported the facilitator along the way.
Once each group picked a facilitator I asked who they had picked and wrote the name down. I kept track of who had been a facilitator and who hadn’t just to make sure that everyone had a chance to lead.
What was the facilitator responsible for?
We kept the facilitator responsibilities a little loose for interpretation and to our surprise everyone figured out what the job was pretty organically. We told everyone that the facilitator was “responsible for getting the group through the activity successfully,” and left the details of what that meant up to them. This allowed everyone to use their own unique personality and skills to find their own method and process for leading a group. Additionally, everyone else on the team was super supportive of the person who was the facilitator, especially if they could tell that person had never facilitated before.
Step 3 — Do the activity for an hour or less
We knew from experience that an hour was often the most time our team would get from their product managers and engineers to do a workshop. We would definitely still propose larger workshops to our product teams as often as possible, but we needed to train our team for the lowest common denominator which was about an hour per workshop.
Once we had all read the activity instructions together and picked facilitators it was time to actually do the activity. We found that each of the individual teams were so excited and eager to get started on the activity that they jumped right into it before we even realized we had begun. We all knew we were there to learn, do new things together and that there was no pressure to perform, so everyone’s energy and excitement was high.
We also knew that if the individual designer and researcher had strong positive experiences during this workshop training that that energy and drive would carry over to their projects when they got back to the office. Which would help them be more likely to propose and run workshops with their product teams.
As the teams did the activity I would watch and observe how each team was doing, noting their differences, their dynamics and how each team interpreted the activity.
I also kept track of the time. I had a timer going on the conference room screen for everyone to see and when the timer reached the 30 and 15 minute marks I would call those times out. Calling the time for everyone turned out to be important because it was easy for the groups to get caught up in what they were doing and lose track of time. When I called the time they would then refocus on getting to the end of the activity and start winding things down.
Step 4 — Discuss how the activity went with the larger group
After each activity was done we went around the room and had each team’s facilitator explain what their team did, their final output from the activity and what the team thought of the activity.
We found right away that no two teams did the activities the same and that was really valuable to know. We were discovering that there were many different ways to interpret each activity and uncovering the advantages and disadvantages of each interpretation. The designers and researchers would now be more prepared to pivot and adapt if and when their future activities didn’t go by the book.
Once all the teams had finished reporting their experiences with the activity we then discussed the differences as a group and the overall take-aways from the activity. During these group discussions we started to compare and contrast each team’s interpretation of the activity and we reached conclusions about the activity’s strength and weaknesses.
Note — Breaks between activities
We found that even though our teams were excited and energized to do each activity, the activities still drained them. We made sure to take a fifteen minute break in between each activity to give everyone a chance to go to the bathroom and let their minds clear a little bit before starting the next activity.
Summary
As you’ll discover, there are hundreds of different workshop activities out there, none of them are the same and they really aren’t interchangeable. That was a huge revelation for us. Most of us had only participated in a handful of activities in our careers and we tended to think that post-ups and affinity diagrams were all there was.
But preparing for this workshop on workshops taught us that each activity is a unique tool with very specific processes, benefits and outcomes. We also realized that the more activities we were familiar with the greater impact we could have getting to know our users, processing what we’ve learned with our product teams and ideating with our product teams.
Creating this two day workshop on workshops was how we decided to teach our designers and researchers more about UX workshops. We also knew that if our designers and researchers had an exciting, no pressure and fun time doing workshops together that that energy and positivity would inspire and motive them to propose and run more workshops with their product teams.
More articles on UX workshops
This article is part of a series of articles on UX workshops, for even more useful information see the following.
Unlocking the power of UX workshops: a comprehensive guide to purpose, benefits, and construction
34 Workshop activities to do with your users
