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Why run workshops: comparing UX discovery methods
Workshops aren't the only way to conduct discovery, kickoff projects, or collaborate with stakeholders and users. I think they're the best way. These posts go into some of the rationale for when to choose workshops, as well as when not to choose workshops.
Plan winning workshops
Important takeaways and lessons to keep in mind when planning your own UX workshops.
Workshop roles, responsibilities
Clear roles and responsibilities let you work together as a team to ensure great collaboration with your workshop participants.
Workshop checklist
Free download — A checklist that collects 29 activities, including nine participant communications, that help wonderful workshops go off without a hitch.
Updated Mar 19, 2023
From the blog
Research suggests that groups who challenge each other, who offer good dissent, generate more, better ideas.
What could we give away that was inexpensive and would still reward good behavior from workshop participants?
You don't own the product's experience. If you want to build really great products, you have to help your team work better together.
Good workshops require good outputs and good participant experiences. Hybrid workshops make the participant experience much more difficult.
Make sure your workshops run on time using visual clocks and marking when you should move from activity to activity.
Design thinking facilitation helps your team get on the same page, so they can make productive decisions and move forward.
We often use design thinking as shorthand for workshops, but workshops are only one way to deliver design thinking, and you often have better options.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Dr. Dawan Stanford, Austin discusses product design, collaboration in design work, challenges that can arise when collaborating, designing within and for systems, workshop design, and collaboration facilitation.
Master meetings by learning how to run three types of meetings. Are you meeting to inform? Answer a question? Or figure something out?
You have more control of brainstorms than you realize. Use ‘type’ and ‘frame’ to manage the breadth and depth of what teams brainstorm.
Collaboration often focuses on how to facilitate. However, the most important parts of any collaboration are the frame and how you finish.
Design thinking structure and methods counteract group bias and ensure teams make better informed decisions for better outcomes.
Looking for dot-voting alternatives? The 'Vote with your feet' workshop activity identifies preferred ideas without alienating outliers.
Giant workshops are really about small groups of 6-12. How can we optimize giant workshops to help groups to work together better?
Tony Daussat graciously had me on his Experience Design podcast to talk about the importance of collaboration (very!).
If you're drawing on a whiteboard or flip chart in front of a group, keep these tips in mind.
Organize your meetings around outcomes. At the end of the meeting, what do you want to walk out with?
Facilitation training and communities
Communities to learn, share, and explore the art of workshop facilitation.
Updated Jan 7, 2023
Remote workshop facilitation tools
Use digital walls to capture outcomes during in-person workshops, or facilitate entire remote workshops.
Workshop facilitation activities
Six sites that collect collaboration and workshop activities.
Updated Jan 7, 2023
Want to facilitate wonderful workshops and masterful meetings?
Learn how to build trust, so participants jump into activities and how to lead collaboration, so you everyone participates. In Work the Room, Austin shares his 15 years of experience facilitating design thinking, innovation, and strategy workshops.
Visit the book website to learn more.
During workshops, groupthink works against the divergent thinking you want to facilitate. But there are five approaches that prevent this.