How to Prepare Workshops and What Information to Get Out of Them
This present article comes as a direct follow-up to “Design Workshops” which I wrote in 2016. That particular article focused on the definition of the structure of an Ideation workshop, with tasks and activities outlined in order to establish a strategy on how to move from abstract concepts/ideas and jumpstart the process of actually making a product or application. Since then I’ve had a lot of conversations with different design professionals, who asked about the concepts of workshops, and how they can take different characteristics when you’re going through the design process. This article aims to clarify types of workshops and engagements that I’ve experienced and developed, how they become relevant to product design, and also how to effectively use them when.
1.What types of workshops exist and what is their purpose? In order to clarify this article, I should preface that what I designate by “Workshop”, it can typically have other formal titles according to different organizational environments and cultures. Among the more common designations I’ve come across, there are “Brainstorm sessions”, “Design Sessions”, “Participatory Design Work Sessions”, “Design Reviews” and many others. All these titles reflect a common ground — in order to jumpstart a process or in order to gather feedback, design sessions/workshops are needed in order to present, discuss, share, and collect data. From my own experience of having worked with a wide array of different design groups, I’ve come to realize that typically Workshops can be grouped into the following categories: Ideation/Incubation Workshops (much like the article I wrote and alluded to before), Design Workshops (focused primarily in expanding the concepts of the previous workshops, where the functionality of a product is fully outlined, including how the product will effectively behave across multiple instances, the scenarios, personas who will be using it, the platforms and behaviors to expect, among many other details), Design Review Workshops (aimed at showcasing findings/prototypes and gathering internal feedback from different groups/entities) and finally, User Testing Workshops (with live focus groups, who engage with prototypes that have been specifically conceived for those sessions). The underlining purpose to all these workshops, is primarily collaboration, clarification, understanding, and strategy. When working in Product Design, it’s of capital importance to always be mindful of the principal triumvirate which includes: business demands, user demands, technology demands. Being able to create workshops, allows for different team members to unify their efforts, and gain visibility into a process that in order to be successful has to be collaborative and transparent in its aspirations.
2.How to prepare for workshops and effectively use groups? In order to address this point, I’ll start by adding a bit of personal context and history about myself. After finishing my college degree, I enrolled in a Post Degree program, specifically focused on Multimedia and Electronic Arts. The goal for that program was to train its students in multimedia products, across a vast breadth of software applications while also teaching human/computer interaction concepts, but also through its initial month (8 hours a day), teach those same students how to effectively prepare classes and teach them. It was a very important part of the program focused on pedagogy, and also on how to communicate with different audiences, knowing how to engage with them through different exercises, and above all, be able to be effective, maintain the focus of everyone’s attention, and enable these groups to be as successful as possible when learning new subject matters. One of the very important things that I learned while I was a part of that program, included the preparation of the classes, by understanding whom I’m teaching and communicating to, what their backgrounds are, and what their expectations for the sessions are, in other words, understanding the personas you’re working with. This segue ways perfectly into making Workshops effective and how to prepare for them. When a designer is preparing a Workshop, independently of its nature, there should always be a notion of the group that will participate in that workshop. Different participants come with different levels of expectations (and background and experiences), particularly when it comes to engaging in different activities and exercises. When putting together the Workshop always remember: these are supposed to be all-inclusive and focused on participation. It’s up to the designer/facilitator, to come forward and while recognizing the different personas within the workshop and their different levels of comfort with what is being asked, still engage everyone, in order to make the workshop as successful as possible. As far as activities, timings, surveys, all the tasks that comprise a robust Workshop, they should be outlined sequentially, according to the goals the designer sets for the workshop. This means everything from discussion groups, sketching exercises, presentation panels, role playing activities, anything that can give workshops additional value and richness.
3.How to use the information produced during the workshops, and how do you document these? Different workshops lead to a variety of results across different paths, but the question I always get asked focuses on the results and outcomes of these workshops. Unlike classes where the students engage in exercises and activities in order to gain insight into how a software application works, or how a piece of information can be relevant when structuring a project, the types of workshops I’m alluding to in this article, actually produce palpable and quantifiable data, that the designer can use in the design process in order to refine the product that is being designed. What does this means in concrete terms: all the sketches, notes, surveys, post-it notes, can and should be documented in a support (Invision Boards, Google Docs, Trello Boards, Wikipage, any software tool deemed relevant), to further substantiate the process that is being outlined as the product is being designed. This information and data is as relevant, the easier it is to access and be digested not just by designers, but also by Product Owners, Project Managers, Development teams, Stakeholders, who can all understand how the process is being refined by an open discussion with multiple collaborators.
4.Measuring the success of workshops. Every initiative needs to be measurable in terms of results, in order to justify being done or repeated/ingrained as a core component of the process (in this particular case the design process). In the case of Workshops, they inform the design process, and allow for different sources of input to come into play (varying to the type of workshop that we’re addressing). The best way to define the success of workshops, lies first and foremost, on the level of investment that the teams have in them, but also and subsequently, how the iterative process and further refinement of the product experience is informed by the data gathered from them, clarification of processes and expectations by different teams, clear documentation produced (which allows for different team members to be well versed on how the product has evolved through the process) and finally, how the users respond to the product itself.
I’ll finalize this article by stating that Workshops (or any designation they may fall under), can be a very effective way to bring different teams together, in ways that allows for everyone to have a shared ownership of what is being created, while simultaneously understanding that the design process itself is not the sole property or a specific group or entity, but that it is a part of an effort that is as successful as everyone’s investment in it may be.
