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November 4, 2021
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November 4, 2021
Workshops are a powerful force-multiplier for any user researcher as they gather folks together—in-person or digitally—around a shared set of goals.
These moments offer unique opportunities to share insights, generate ideas, or brainstorm new ways of approaching recurring questions. They promote alignment, socialize research's impact and approach, and sharpen the ways stakeholders understand the practice.
We asked our community for some examples of workshops that are expanding folks' practice and we received some sharp responses.
Below, a handful of professionals share a collection of workshops with details on when to use it, how to set it up, and best practices for making it a success. A huge thanks to everyone who contributed to this piece!
A synthesis collab is a meeting to discuss research findings and determine actionable next steps. Often, the meeting includes members from various functions in the organization (i.e., design, product) beyond your immediate research team.
I’ve finished collecting and analyzing qualitative data through methods like in-depth interviews or concept tests, and I want to involve stakeholders in unearthing the overall key themes, pain points, remaining knowledge gaps and actions.
All the heavy lifting on the raw data analysis should be done beforehand. You should have extracted insights, key quotes and relevant imagery documented either on paper/ post-its (for in-person) or online, such as in Miro. Ensure to notate which of the above comes from which research participant.
In your workshop you will put all of this together, and as a group identify the themes that will help your project move forward
Using a tool like Miro or Mural along with Zoom or Google meet can ensure the smooth facilitation of this workshop remotely. Consider reducing the time a little if possible, as workshops of this nature can be more tiring sitting in front of a computer screen.
Setting clear expectations to your attendees about the intention and expected outcomes. This type of workshop is not a polished share of concrete action items (they will come!), but a hands-on session where active participation is expected.
By Patricia Donnellan, Senior UX Researcher at Stitch Fix
Persona passports are artifact-based representations of your ideal users that include an overview of the “person,” followed by blank sections to illustrate where they are in their journey with the experience and other important aspects of their lives.
For example, one of our personas was a very busy mom who just wants to continue to look and feel stylish, but also has a lot of other things on her plate. On the passport, it would outline who she is, how she’s interacted with StitchFix so far, and what’s important to her in her style journey.
A group of colleagues would then grab one of the passports and go around in character and explain who they are and what’s important to them. Really immersing themselves in the role to better understand potential pain points/needs that the user may have.
I want to inject a participatory element into my research share outs. Effective personas ask for perspective-taking, empathy, and reflection. This workshop uses physical artifacts to "take" stakeholders to the mindsets our users occupy as they engage with our product.
Learn more about how Patricia ran the workshop and see persona passport examples
By Sarah Delaney, Behavioral Designer at Lirio
A brain-picking workshop is a group session designed to discuss potential content ideas. Prior to these meetings I’ve shared prompts to get my team to start brainstorming before we meet so that our meetings are as efficient as possible because they tend to be hours long or a series of meetings.
My teammates often hear me gush over the fact that I am on a team of Behavioral Designers. And, it’s true! In a nascent field, I recognize the luxury of brainstorming partners and I often share this sentiment with my coworkers.
I used this workshop when I was seeking the creative juices of my fellow Behavioral Designers and couldn’t walk over to their office and riff on creative ideas…which is a familiar feeling since we’re a remote team!
Working remotely, I have observed that it’s challenging for me to sustain a level of energy during collaborative workshops for an entire work day. Sessions that I may have previously scheduled for 4-hours or 8-hours are extremely draining for me over Zoom—whether I’m the facilitator or participant.
This feeling has prompted me to prioritize opportunities for collaborative workshops and segment sessions that in a pre-COVID workplace may have been one block of a longer day.
In that spirit, this workshop features one segment of our behavioral design process at Lirio. This segment is focused on ideating before we draft content. Pre-remote-work, I may have combined this segment with a synthesis of discovery research beforehand and a drafting session afterward.
In the remote work context, this segment felt just long enough to be productive and short enough to maintain our energized focus. Before the workshop, our team has:
During the workshop, using the ideation prompts, we share ideas of how we might create content, based on the literature review and discovery research.
During the workshop itself, we capture ideas of how we might speak to our reader, based on what we learned from the literature review and discovery research.
Structured brainstorming or ideation relies on the structure that you compose. Invest time in intentionally creating that structure.
Our collective time amounts to many hours! In this vein, whenever our team gathers for a workshop such as this one I feel responsible for ensuring that our collective time is used efficiently. I’ve found that intentional, but loosely held, structure facilitates what I see as an efficient shared time.
You know your team or audience best. Create a structure that’s right for them!
By Janice Wong, Principal UX Researcher at Amazon UX Lab
An agenda-setting brainstorm is a structured meeting that brings clarity and clear expectations to brainstorms, which can traditionally be too whimsical with inconsistent outputs, stunting the would-be collaboration between teams.
I want to align stakeholders on a shared goal, level-set about research's ability to provide insights for business questions, and make the sessions feel productive and next-step-setting. These can transform brainstorming into agenda-setting ideation.
Discover Janice's 5 essential tips for successful agenda-setting brainstorms
By Bob Konow, Experience Design Research Director at Bounteous
A positive pressure workshop is a session with researchers and stakeholders to align on next steps/initiatives. These meetings are designed to put things in motion and get everyone on the same page.
No one can agree on anything and we’re at a stand still in the process.
Goals. You need goals. This may be what you need to get the project moving or what the stakeholder could benefit most from to get everything rolling. If the stakeholders are open to it, starting with an OKR or smart goals activity can work to articulate the outcomes.
If you find yourself having to use this workshop technique you probably have a sense of what can shake the cobwebs off. Setting up a blank Miro board or some screens in Figma to pregame depending on the necessary outcomes.
Go through any previous sessions, workshops, research and try to find the one or two issues that if resolved can breakthrough.
It is sometimes beneficial to wrap the tense activities in with other activities or readouts. The basic steps:
Cameras on! I have found it beneficial to have a colleague paying attention to people’s reactions to the activities and maintaining a chat backchannel. If one stakeholder is looking upset, eye rolling, or more subtle cues it is important to inform the facilitator to address the energy or person directly.
A line in the sand. Showcase the importance of having everyone be aligned on a common goal for moving forward. Explain to the stakeholders that this is necessary for overall success.
This isn’t for everyone and there are a lot of considerations to take into account.
By Nikki Anderson-Stainer, Founder & Managing Director at User Research Academy
A session to spark innovation and encourage team creativity. I’ll often use them to generate novel or new product experience ideas.
I want to light a fire in my stakeholders and create a link between their questions, my insights, and the goals we're all trying to meet. Ideation workshops can transform stakeholders into collaborators and build empathy for your research practice, increasing investment into user-centered insights gathering techniques.
Read more about Nikki's ideation workshop strategies
By Pam Hamilton, Author of The Workshop Book and Supercharged Teams
A session to come up with ideas as far-fetched as possible and reel them back into something attainable. This is to help generate new ideas without the restrictions of “Is this even feasible?” It encourages creativity within a cognitive sandbox.
The idea stretcher tool is a great way to take the obvious, stretch it far, then bring it back into the realms of the realistic. It is particularly good for allowing otherwise cautious or very rational people to safely push ideas beyond the possible, then bring them back to the feasible.
When you are building on past successes, or ideas that are already “good enough”, there is a temptation to be too safe because you have ways of working that are successful and so we don’t stretch ourselves or the ideas enough.
In situations like this you need to help teams go beyond the obvious and into the extreme to make sure they are being as ambitious with their thinking as possible.
The worst thing you can do is incrementally improve ideas from the obvious, little by little, because you are already starting from a low point of originality. Far better to use the obvious idea, go easy with it, then bring it back into the realms of possibility.
This works perfectly if you paste the JPEG template we’ve provided up on Mural, or even make columns in a Google Doc for people to collaborate on. So long as they are clear on the order of the columns (going from obvious-extreme-innovative-ambitious), it works.
Make sure you’ve got three “good enough” ideas to begin with and have agreed which ones those are. You need to start with something solid, don’t start with any old idea or ideas that are too early, or you risk creating a weak foundation.
By Samaher Ramzan, UX Researcher at 1Password
A session to get your team involved in the research process as early as possible to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals.
I need to bring team members and various stakeholders together to align on the goals of a project. Being clear on the reasons for conducting a study, potential hypothesis and how we measure success are key items to determine during this time. This workshop will answer if and how people plan to use insights from the project. It will help identify if there are any pre-existing assumptions or hypotheses as well as highlighting any expectations the team might have going into the project.
For this workshop you will need to begin by determining who needs to be involved in the session. This will vary depending on the project, but I like to include anyone who might want to stay informed during the project, whether it’s just through updates or actually participating in research sessions. Next, you will need to list out the questions you want to ask (I have listed a few examples at the end). Lastly, you will need to prepare some materials to write on and with such as post-its and markers for everyone in the session to write down their thoughts.
I would suggest collaborative tools like Figjam or Miro to replace physical materials like post-its and markers. Figjam has a timer feature as well which is super handy for this activity. Share the link with your team ahead of the session and then work on it together while in a video call.
Allocating the right amount of time for a session like this is key and it often depends on the amount of questions you have and how many people are in the session. At the end of the workshop ask yourself if you have the information you need to move forward with the project. If not, consider scheduling a follow up session.
I’ve listed a couple questions here in case they might be helpful (I expect these to vary case by case):
Ben has a doctorate in communication studies from Arizona State University, studying “nonverbal courtship signals”, a.k.a. flirting. No, he doesn’t have dating advice for you.
