Improv to Improve: How We Manage and Build Our Workshops?
Being pragmatic does not mean we can’t have fun!
As a team of UX Designers, we love having fun while learning new things. This is the second part of our series “Improv to Improve”, focusing on how to run improv sessions.
Read part 1 on why you should do improv and why it helps at work here. If you want your own cookbook mixing improvisation and design, read part 3 of our improv to improve series here!
Find the workshop hosts
Matthieu has his own stand-up comedy side gig and performs on various open stages in Paris. He’s a passionate improv practitioner / teacher. He created all the staging and coaching part of our workshops.
Camille (me) — Coordination, cue cards and environment.
I’m a board game lover. And my team mates tend to define me as very (very!) organized. I coordinate the four of us and bring the idea of all the accessories and environment of the improv sessions. Putting it to the real level of board game.
Morgane is an indie game designer and an international speaker, recognized for her knowledge of strategy within big companies. We won’t say that giving advice is her passion (or maybe… 😇), but she followed us in our idea and often participates and animates. — Screenwriting and presenter.
Marine has always loved being on stage. In her younger years, she did a lot of sports competitions, music and ballet. When she wasn’t doing it, she was crafting things and writing stories. She naturally takes charge of screenwriting and workshop animation.
Design the workshops setup
As Morgane explained in her article Changing a 150-Year-Old Bank with Design: 3 Impacts, we work on a daily basis in pizza teams made of a UX Designer, business representatives and technical representatives. So for us, we decided to build our scenes with these 3 roles in our cast.
We start with screenwriting our scenes: once the theme of the improv session is defined, Matthieu and Marine brainstorm on a list of situations to play with. Usually, Matthieu begins with a funny title and they build together on it. Afterwards, they draw the outlines of the situation and characters’ issues.
When it’s done, they share everything with Morgane and I to get our feedback and identify some key elements to help the UX Designer character during the improv. Usually, Morgane finalizes this part.
When everything has been agreed, Marine scripts all situations, roles and keys — I’ll then review them to ensure they’re coherent, clarity and typo-free 😊.
The level of details differs depending on the character picked up:
UX Designer: usually playing their own role. They know just enough to go into the improv, without knowing the source of conflict, just as we all do when we go to the first meeting of a new project. They will have to find the reason of the conflict and find a solution to solve it.
Business Representative: they know all details of the situation and will have a dedicated role to play, accentuating a certain trait.
Technical Representative: like the business representative, they know all details and will have to take a particular posture.
During our meetup, we realized that we would need to reassure our lovely UX actors on their scene by bringing somehow more structure. Indeed, they don’t know what will happen, how it will happen, and details about the improv would be given only orally (except if you have the memory of an elephant of course!) — but how? 🤔
We first defined and stated clear rules: we always open our sessions with an explanation of how improv works and what are the main rules of improv.
The second element was to design cue cards: as a board game lover, I often come across the exact same feelings when discovering a new game (new contexts, mechanisms and character specificity). So I checked various board games and identified that cue cards are usually used to summarize major details. I shared this idea with my teammates: they loved it!
We designed one card for each character to better communicate on everyone’s role. We then tested the impact of the handcrafted cards during the next workshop — and it was a great success! 🙌 Since then, we use cue cards for every single workshop.
But hold on! What about the audience watching the performance? 🙄 Even if they’ve got a very great memory (no doubt about it), we can also give them a bit more context on the scene played. It needs to be attractive without disclosing too much: each scene has a background slide disclosing its funny title and the 4-minutes countdown so actors know how much time is left during the scene.
3… 2… 1… Actions!
Before each workshop, we always set up the room we use: all actors should have enough space (but not too much of course) and feel comfortable while the audience should to be able to see the scene.
During workshops, the four of us have a role to play which has been defined according to our personality. Usually, Marine animates the workshop, elects volunteers and takes care of the audience. Matthieu coaches business and technical representatives while I look after the UX Designer, and Morgane animates the 10-minutes debrief and provides key actionable advice.
Of course, we have to be able to take on any of the other roles if one us is missing.
Thanks for reading!
If you want to know more about improv workshops, contact us via our Design website.
I also invite you to read Matthieu’s article explaining how to create your own cookbook here, the third article of this series 😉.
