How to create and structure a productive design workshop When done well though, workshops are invaluable to jumpstarting your team’s progress on any project by uniting diverse opinions and getting people on the same page. As the organizer, it’s your responsibility to ensure everyone’s time is spent wisely and you uncover the insights needed to move the project forward. It takes clear and deliberate planning to run a kickass workshop. There’s nothing scarier than giving someone a blank piece of paper and saying, ‘Go, give me all your ideas.’ Most recently, I ran a multipart workshop about the vision of our support products that we repeated across design, product management, engineering, and marketing in both Dublin and San Francisco. Workshops are about getting stuff done, and are often used as milestones to start things or make decisions.Īt Intercom for example, we like to run workshops to kick off big projects with the broader team. Too often, a discussion can go unfocused, brainstormed solutions end up scattered and lacking direction, or the session dissolves into a competition of who can assert their ideas louder.Ĭollaboration comes in many flavors, from small informal working sessions and group critiques to full-blown workshops.ĭesign workshops are an opportunity for a team to untangle a problem together by going through a series of group exercises designed to get to a specific outcome. But beware: that alone doesn’t automatically guarantee creative outputs and ideas.
When we want to discuss problems, imagine new ideas and brainstorm solutions, it’s best to bring people together. As a product designer creating digital experiences, it’s equally important to obsess over the physical ones too.ĭesign and collaboration go hand in hand.