Throwback: No risk, no fun. Or: How to run a Design Thinking Remote Workshop.

Do you remember when Covid first appeared on the landscape of our nightmares?

More than two years ago, I forced myself to conduct a Design Thinking Workshop in the digital world. Working as a consultant, lecturer, and facilitator meant working closely with different individuals, groups, and teams. So Covid separated me from one of my sources of energy: Human Beings.

Meanwhile, we seem to return to normal, and it’s time to reflect on my first digital Design Thinking Workshop, which brought me straight into the danger zone.

From the comfort zone to the danger zone

I have been practicing Design Thinking since 2012 — I lost count of how many lectures, workshops, and projects we’ve carried out already. We encountered a variety of aliens that were curious about Design Thinking — sometimes skeptical and rarely even hostile. We worked in living spaces made for creative collaboration and in those where a lack of daylight and fresh air did not prevent the participants from developing new ideas for products, services, and processes. My highlight in 2019 was a Design Thinking Quick & Dirty Workshop XXL at the Manage Agile Conference in Berlin: 250 people gathered and developed 25 new ideas, which the organizers are now gradually implementing…

… but enough is enough.

So far, we could not be accused of lacking adaptability and courage.

Until Covid-19 haunted us and decided that social distancing is the means of choice. ‘If that’s the way it is,’ was the impulse of my inner coward, ‘then we can only move our April 2020 workshop to, well, judgment day!’ ‘First of all, I would like to know why we are not facilitating a remote workshop; everyone is doing this right now! We are a software company, and we are also talking about innovation all the time, so if WE don’t dare, who else will?’ said the nagging part in me. ‘I think I know what is stopping our scaredy-cat,’ Curiosity interrupted our beginning dispute. ‘Design Thinking thrives on the interaction between people who put their heads together to discuss, listen, slide back and forth on a board packed with sticky notes and look deep into their customers’ eyes to identify their needs. ‘Could it be, Little Coward, that you feel we cannot meet these demands in the virtual world?’ The Little Coward frowned … ‘No worries!’ said Courage, ‘together we’ll rock this!’

The Making of a ‘Design Thinking Remote’ Workshop

It all started with trying out different digital tools. We were already working with the Office 365 application ‘Teams’ anyways, so it quickly became apparent that audio and video communication and document sharing, such as the Design Thinking presentation, would take place via MS Teams. We could also use this application to invite any number of people to online meetings who don’t even use MS Teams. We then tried Mural, the Concept Board, and Miro to facilitate the Design Thinking workshop. Miro seemed to be the most suitable tool for our purposes — the free version provides up to three boards, which as many people as possible can work on.

From the analog to the digital world

We visualized our analog Design Thinking-Workshop-World point by point for three teams on a Miro board. The design and setup took a lot of time: we worked on that for almost two full days, as we had to familiarize ourselves with the tool. But testing the prototype and the highly positive feedback from the participants proved that we are on the right track!

Good collaboration works virtually as well.

We have set up a total of four team rooms via MS Teams. The welcome and the introduction to the Miro board, as well as the theoretical input on the topic of Design Thinking, took place with 12 participants and the coaches in the team’s plenum. To work within the individual groups, our coaches, Jette, Inga, and Sophia, each with four people, switched to their respective team rooms. During the session, we met in the plenum for new input and to attend the final presentation developed by the individual teams. I spent most of the time in the plenum to be available in the event of technical difficulties — two of our participants actually ‘got lost’ between the individual team rooms.

How might we prepare a Design Workshop in an easily accessible way for our participants?

If you want to run a Design Thinking Workshop remotely, we would like to recommend the following:

• Inform the participants about a week in advance about the choice of your tools and what the participants have to do to gain access to them. We recommend Google Chrome or Firefox as browsers. At Miro, you have to register with an Email and a password.
• The audio function is essential; the video function allows the participants to socially connect at least a little, especially when working in smaller teams. Ask the participants to have a headset available if possible. This helps to keep unwanted noises out.
• If you have the opportunity, you and the team members should work on two screens (one for MS Teams, one for Miro).
• Invite the participants to have a look at your virtual playground beforehand, but ask them to leave everything untouched. (There’s also a lockout feature that prevents the worst.)
• If you want to conduct interviews, ask the participants, according to your schedule to invite their interview partners at the appropriate time.
• Write down the participants’ email addresses and telephone numbers so you can contact them if the worst comes to the worst or provide missing links to MS Team rooms again.
• And most importantly: ask the participants to read your information carefully.

The workshop etiquette

Virtual communication is not always running smoothly. But this might help:

• Participants should deactivate the video/camera function if the connection is poor.
• Participants not contributing to the discussion should be so kind as to put the microphone in mute mode.
• What worked well is to ask questions via the chat function there, you can bundle them quickly, and they won’t get lost.
• Ask the participants to start working on Miro only when the coach gives the ‘Hey-ho-let’s-go — it is great fun to work on the board, but if everyone starts playing without listening at the same time, there’ll be chaos — we know what we are talking about!
• Essential for Design Thinking: Please ask the participants to pay attention to the timeboxes self-responsibly if possible. (We, the coaches, communicated via WhatsApp during the workshop and informed each other when we needed more time.) After all, we all want to arrive at the plenum at once.

Our key findings

• We held the Design Thinking Workshop two days in a row for three hours each. Due to the repeated change between MS Teams and Miro, we did not experience the well-known ‘I’m hanging around the whole day in remote meetings’ sag. So we decided to run the next workshop in a full-day format.
• I walked through the process on the two days in the plenary session, and on day 1, I was available for those seeking help, which I found very tiring. After consulting the coaches, I alternately visited the individual teams on day two as a silent listener — which I found very refreshing!
• What was intended as a Design Thinking method training also became a tool training. On the first day, the participants loved the work on Miro.

‘So, Little Coward, how are you doing now?’ ‘Oh, Curiosity, don’t play boss now! I already relaxed when the Miro board was set up,’ grins the former Little Coward. ‘I am particularly pleased about the feedback from our team members, who thanked us several times for the well-thought-out preparation, organization, and moderation. But what makes me more than happy is that everyone was amazed at how creative and value-adding you can collaborate in the virtual world, even though we didn’t know each other before. Design Thinking works digitally too!’

Reflection of throwback

It’s actually a little bit awkward to read about how to prepare a digital Design Thinking workshop or about the workshop etiquette as it is the new normal, isn’t it? But nevertheless, this described first remote Design Thinking workshop was the baseline of what I’m doing now: Making remote teams happy and successful.

Stay safe and healthy! Yours, Little Coward, Curiosity and the Nagging Part of Andrea Kuhfuss, CEO and Co-Founder of the QLab Think Tank.

Andrea Kuhfuss, Co-Founder and CEO of QLab Think Tank GmbH

QLab Think Tank — Design Thinking & InnovationSprints

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.