Structuring An Online Design Fiction Workshop ✏️ 💻 ⏳

Participants talk about their ideas in break out rooms.

At Imagination of Things we have been facilitating Design Fiction Workshops for a few years, but only during the global health crisis have we designed a completely online experience. Our first was with a group of 30 business owners, council people, and local movers and shakers from the Dingle Peninsula on the furthest west coast of Ireland. One of our studio partners, Tom Power, hails from the town, and so the Dingle Innovation & Creativity Hub invited us for a four day ideation session about a preferred future for the peninsula as a pending crisis looms ahead in rural jobs, climate, and the tourism industry. We ran a tight ship and a strict schedule that many friends and colleagues have inquired about for specifics, tips, and how-to’s. Here we will quickly lay out our learnings for anyone interested in online facilitation.

🎙️ Reinventing the ‘vocal jam time’.

A spontaneous and open mic style of facilitation simply won’t work with a group of more than 5 people in a video call. It will turn into a cacophony of voices tuning in and out as the video conferencing algorithm fails to determine who gets the amplification. So, we designed the exact moments when and why participants speak. We asked them to react to a specific question or prompt in the chat, or had them present their ideas inside of a time limit we set. For some creative prompts, we sent them a prep email, so that participants would be able to prepare.

🤭 Silent expression in collaborative tools.

Using tools like Miro board and Google Slides, we have a designated space for each exercise, that we introduce in the workshop, and then allow the participants a moment to brainstorm live. Participants don’t verbally interact during these moments, but as the facilitators we take it upon ourselves to be ‘umpires’ of the brainstorm — like sports announcers, we narrate the interesting ideas as we spot them.

Brainstorming phase using Miro board.

Three participants are putting together their idea in a break out room.

🌿 Avoid screen fatigue by scheduling outdoor creative missions and private break out sessions.

Our 4 day workshop was book-ended with two intensive online experiences, and for the 2 days in between, the groups were left to structure their own meetings together, according to their common schedules. During this in between ‘homework’ period, we challenged the groups to go outside and scout locations, and scavenge for objects that inspire them. We then invited them to make a 30 minute check in with us, describe their idea so far, ask questions, and voice concerns. Therefore the ‘vocal jam time’ is segmented into smaller groups and shorter, focused time brackets, so it is less likely to waste precious screen time over detailed discussions made privy to the entire workshop.

Templates for Concept Cards, a key part of our Design Fiction process.

📋 Make templates for the exercises and presentations.

There is so little flexible space during online workshops for concerns, confusion or doubts to be expressed, so it is best to have super structured worksheets or presentations that participants fill in. Give a good few minutes to show and describe the format they will put their ideas into, and give them tips for presenting online, as well as set a strict time limit for presentations, and remind them to ask questions via the video call chat.

👯 Choreograph every minute.

Create a timed schedule, have all of your tabs open, an email sent with all of the necessary links, tools, tutorials, break out rooms or groups already assigned. Set up your collaborative tools with sections designated for each exercise, put your creative prompts in writing for participants to refer to if they miss it the first time, and templates for the participants to fill out and present.

Here is how we scheduled our on and off screen time:

Day 1
We introduce the workshop — 15 minutes
Icebreaker exercise using chat — 10 minutes
Participants brainstorm in digital whiteboard — 20 minutes
We present inspirational projects — 20 minutes
Participants fill out their Concept Card templates — 30 minutes
We assign weekend creative missions — 10 minutes

Days 2 & 3
Participants schedule their own meeting with their group members, complete creative missions, and schedule a 20 minute check in video call with us.

Day 4
We give tips and templates for their final ideas — 15 minutes
Participants prepare their presentations in break out rooms — 1 hour
Final Presentations — 5 minutes each
After party — 30 minutes

Getting ready for participants to present their ideas, 5 minutes each.

🤖 Create something out of the digital stuff.

Replacing the magic of in-person workshops is certainly a loss, but one thing that you gain from being online is a bunch of digitized thoughts. If you had participants brainstorming on post-its in an online whiteboard, or documenting their ideas in an online presentation, you can download that information in a variety of formats, from JSON to simply screenshots. We took all of the brainstorm ideas from our workshop and created a fun ‘idea generator’ from it to show the diversity of thought that came out of the experience.

We downloaded a .csv from Miro, and put all of the post-its into a machine learning algorithm.

An Irish Invention generator, using all of the post-its from the workshop brainstorm.

🍻 Organize an online after party.

We built a Dingle-themed online playspace using the open-sourced Mozilla Hubs, an easy to use 3D world on your browser where you can chat and wander.

Participants run around and play in the 3D world we created.

Participants have a beer and snack IRL, but play with graffiti and 3D burgers in the online world.

💡 Curious to learn about the results of the workshop?

We created documentation of the ideas — you can check it out at Dingle Peninsula 2030 ↗️.

Imagination of Things created illustrations and stories to match the ideas from the workshop participants.