Details Create an Experience. How we set up our EX Design Training — Week 2 in 2020!
A selection of things we care for when we design and do learning experiences 📚
Hey this Julius & Seyda from EX Lab writing this week about our year. We reflect on what we were doing and want to share our experiences on how we are building our company.
The second week of 2020 was all about our Employee Experience Training. There were 12 eager participants onboarded, now waiting to join us on Thursday and Friday. I took the time to deep dive into how we set up our training. This week we will cover a few aspects.
Yeah its a team huddle!
What are we doing there? We check-in! I like to hold hands while doing it, to intensify it — is strange, just try that when you really trust your co-workers. We were running around before, doing this and that — but in order to start the preparation I called Madlen and Seyda and we did this team circle. It puts everyone in the same space and it insists that we pause for a moment, stepping back from doing; share a moment of togetherness to calm down, check-in emotionally with each other and prioritize what needs to be done now.
I noticed that this makes a tremendous difference. Especially when I organise events where I have a large team of coaches and supporters that form the team and they arrive individually and start to move around to prepare before the participants arrive. It gives the feeling of coherence, of belonging to each other, as a team, which is crucial, especially when you host events together where a lot of synchronization is involved. So, don’t forget to make this moment for your team — it takes just 5–10 minutes and they are totally worth it to have the feeling that everyone is pulling in the same direction.
Space Transformation
We put a lot of thought in how we arrange the space. Where teams work, where we come together, where what kind of tables and chairs are etc pp. Space is for us more than a room, it is an actor in the whole experience of the training. One of biggest drives here is that we co-inhabit our space with a gallery, so from the ground up, this doesn’t feel like a training or a seminar because we have art on the wall and big big windows everywhere.
Tables
We have camping tables for two reasons. First, they are transformable and we can build them down and store them easily. Also the tables invoke a feeling of improvisation. Because we know them from camping, with our families, and there we need to improvise. And designing something, prototyping it, starts with improvising. Looking for things to misuse to test. In other trainings we have used standing tables, these round ones. While they are good for having participants not get too comfortable sitting down, we tend to associate them with experiences that are often not so pleasurable, like networking events, or waiting areas with small talk, sooo we really like our camping tables.
White Boards
We build our own whiteboards, because they need to be ultra-mobile, easy to store and we didn’t like the aesthetics of the ones on the market — this is also the reason why we don’t use flipcharts. We are teaching and learning new ways of working, so we try to eliminate all stimuli that connect to the old school business world — and flipcharts are the epitome.
When we opened EX Lab we even made a short documentary about the whiteboards on instagram — here is a snippet of that. There is something special about building something, collaborating with friends, making something. Thank you Nico & Christian @ Berta Block + Stephan for the music.
Welcoming
In experience design, the beginning of an experience needs to be clearly signalized for people to feel they are entering a new space. A space where a transformation will happen. We are always keen of making this crossing the threshold explicit with tactile artefacts and visual cues for people to feel, more than hear or be shown, that things are different in this space and lure them to be curious about it.
First thing is a smile, and a hello at the door, a handshake, a hug, a short introduction. And then: nametags. We usually use neon tape and ask people to write their names themselves. This shows the scrappiness they will experience ahead. The quick fixes, the prototyping and hands on mindset we want to offer with our training. We want people to feel that we are in this together, we are all co-creators of this learning experience.
Second is the notebooks. Julius already shared how we spend all that time creating those side-hanging notebooks. I loved them 🥰 Besides their great functionality, since they are always with you and not left forgotten in a corner. They are also a visual and tactile cue. We are all here together, wearing this weird notebook that perhaps makes us feel awkward but we are pushing through it. Wearing that notebook is the first leap of faith to be open to the experience ahead, slowly pushing the boundaries.
Abendbrot!
Madlen and Seyda are not Germans and that is why they are fascinated by my culture (I am German) and they are especially fond of Abendbrot — that strange coming together to share slices of bread, dark not white!, on which you put very specific things. I can remember endless questions about if of if not a food is allowed in a Abendbrot, which made it apparent to me what a wonderful and specific activity it actually is.
Grapes? Definitely!
Oranges? Now way!
Mustard? A must!
Jams? Whaaaat, no!
Pils for Abendbrot? Noo, rather something süffig (Im from the south, sooo that might explain this).
We wanted to share this wonder of a snack with our participants and staged a little Abendbrot at the end of Day 1, where we served selected cheeses and some nice sausages together with a Feierabendbier.
Playing
Design Thinking “Ah that’s the stuff where you do the Legos, isn’t it?” A common reaction and we get it, it might seem a little odd.
Prototyping has of course a function, which is testing low-fidelity prototypes, but in workshops and mindset trainings it has additional behavioral benefits. It puts people into action! Going from a word, an idea to something that has a shape in the world requires doing. And that is one of the messages we want to manifest when we do prototyping with our participants in Employee Experience Trainings: Go! Make! Build! Yourself! With your Team! Don’t write down all the requirements and then look for something you can buy. No, make it yourself! Design it yourself! NOW!
Doing new Brainstorming methods helps to unlock our brains. We like to try out methods with our participants that use the senses: using your body, walk around or put yourself in a uncommon position to have different visual stimuli. Sometimes laying on the floor with your team, heads together (we call it starfish ⭐️) is the best way to come up with new ideas. You are relaxed, you can not see them and their reaction to your ideas, but you can hear them very well. “Are people cool with laying on the floor in a training?” — probably not right from the start, but when we reach Brainstorming we already pushed the boundary of trying so far, that getting down on the floor seems like a piece of cake — — also, we do it before them, so we rolemodel this behaviour, it makes it easier.
Celebration & Certificates
Finale furioso. Marking the endpoint of an experience is crucial and we do that by celebrating, giving physical artifacts & creating shared memories. Is it ceremony? Kind of. It starts with an intimate circle, and and appreciation of everyones effort and openness, a nice clap on the shoulder. Then we give out beautiful certificates. Along with the notebooks these are the objects that remind our participants about our journey together and trigger reflections. That is the thing with trainings: learnings are abstract! We try to find ways to make them explicit & tangible. Lastly, the group picture, or well, a boomerang is my preferred medium. Look at these crazy people!
This approach to designing experiences can be of great benefit for creating onboarding programs. The thing with onboarding is that is the moment where you signalize to the person that they are entering in a new world. A world different from where they come from and to make a long lasting impression you can opt for offering more than words on a power point presentation. Appeal to the senses. Think of artifacts, activities, scenery that can project how your company culture is and what new hires can expect from it.
That’s it for week number 2 in this wonderful & challenging year!
By the way! On March 30–31. we are having another one of this Employee Experience Design Trainings, where you can learn to build remarkable experiences along the Employee Lifecycle. Read more and book a lovely ticket here.
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At EX Lab we co-create working places where people want to stay and strive. We are an international & -cultural bunch of empathetic designers & facilitators that help you to create people processes that delight.
We do EX Design Sprints, Virtual Strategy Workshops and Trainings — if you want to know more about Employee Experience Design, sign up for our free Microlearning Workshop to get the full picture of how it works and what you can do with it.
