Design thinking workshops can serve as great opportunities to engage your team, to learn and innovate on your products and service, and to democratize the design process. Conducting these remotely can reach participants you previously would not have involved, either due to geographic constraints or inconvenience. That said, the logistic challenges that come with conducting remote meetings can derail workshops, sometimes even before they’ve started.
Here are 3 common pitfalls to avoid when planning and running your next UX workshop.
Poor Choice (or Preparation) of Tools
DO NOT: Pick a digital collaborative tool because a famous design team uses it.
DO: Prepare files in advance with tools that your team is comfortable and able to use.
A tool with a high learning curve or inconsistent accessibility across the organization will prevent full and uninterrupted collaboration. Particularly if you are attempting to build buy-in and make a case for design thinking, having a difficult-to-learn (and/or expensive) tool may make the process as a whole seem inaccessible to novices. Instead, choose collaborative tools the team already uses and incorporate living artifacts or existing work-tracking tools like JIRA/Trello/Asana during the workshop. The easier it is to add or contribute to the artifacts, the more likely people will be willing to contribute. Don’t rely on a workshop recording or chat transcript to serve as sufficient documentation of the workshop. Recordings may not capture what happens in smaller group discussions — and even if those were recorded, listening to, say, 5 group recordings of 15 min each would add 75 min that people will have to listen to (and likely will not). Chat transcripts can be saved but these are often long and nonprioritized strings of text that are hard to understand or read through. Instead, track the highlights and assign follow-up to-do items to team members.
Research and test your tools’ limits. Some tools have a cap on the number of users who can use a single document at a time. It’s a bad time to discover this limitation in the middle of a remote workshop. You may need to prepare and populate multiple copies of workshop files in advance and double-check file permissions to ensure everyone is able to access them during the workshop.
If your group is large (greater than 10 people), you will want a meeting tool that can break the main group into smaller groups of 3–5 to make it less intimidating (or disruptive) to contribute. Smaller groups may be supported by your meeting software (e.g. Zoom’s “breakout” rooms) or you may need to create separate meeting rooms controlled by a timekeeper. Even if you plan to do an in-person workshop with some attendees and not use a digital collaborative tool, consider making the workshop 100% remote as soon as one person will attend remotely. Doing so ensures equal participation and involvement with all attendees. Otherwise, that one remote attendee will have a severely deteriorated experience and may become more an observer than an active participant.
Not Adapting the Agenda to Fit Organizational Needs
DO NOT: Cut corners with workshops activities by skipping team building or warmups in the interest of a shorter workshop or by subjecting your team to an unrealistic agenda and timeline.
DO: Make time for team building and warmups and plan in extra time for each workshop activity. Run an asynchronous workshop if your team does not have time for a synchronous session.
Even if warmups may feel “fluffy,” they serve an important role in workshop facilitation. They help establish a “safe” space to share, which enables people to be more honest. They also give people time to get familiar with the tools. Ultimately, warmups facilitate future constructive conversation and smooth communication, which, in turn, can expedite decision making.
Examples of warmups:
- How are you feeling, as a metaphor (e.g., if your feelings were weather, what would you be — sunny, cloudy etc.?)
- Adding a funny image to a practice board
- Sharing office skills or talents (e.g., office “superpower”)
- Something unrelated and fun ( e.g., nonwork interests and hobbies)
- Something related, but low-stakes and easy (e.g., what are you excited about today)
Shorter is not necessarily better when it comes to remote workshops. Yes, “Zoom fatigue” is real, but workshop activities generally take longer to do virtually. If the time allocated is too short, people may not feel like they progressed or contributed. Instead, to avoid Zoom fatigue, consider making the workshop feel shorter by switching tasks and formats every 15–20 minutes. (Keep in mind, task switching adds to total required time, though).
That said, you do not have to dedicate an entire day on Zoom to accomplish all the workshop activities in one session. If a long workshop does not work for your context, determine your goals, and dedicate 15–20 minutes of one or more existing meetings to one appropriate workshop activity.
Lastly, if your team is busy, or conflicting schedules prevent a real-time workshop from happening, leverage nonmeeting time to run asynchronous versions of the activities. You can use email, discussion forums, or corporate messaging platforms like Slack or Teams to gather feedback.
Failure to Manage and Reinforce Expectations
DO NOT: Assume everyone will follow meeting instructions or will fully participate.
DO: Clearly (and redundantly) communicate expectations and goals before, during, and after the workshop with written reminders, invitations, and verbal reminders.
Particularly in organizations that are less mature or adjusted to remote work, getting everyone to fully commit to the workshop can be a big challenge. Participants may assume it’s okay to multitask during the meeting or may plan to “hide” in the background by keeping their video off. If your organization is not accustomed to having video on for all meetings, you may have to explicitly state this expectation repeatedly, in the workshop invitation and in followups, so that attendees plan accordingly.
If stakeholders are present during the remote workshop, clear up their role in advance. Will they be observing? If so, their very presence may discourage sharing in a small group, so you may want to keep them out of those small group discussions.
Facilitators should prepare to lead the team by example, as well, by having their video and audio on and sharing their screen to walk participants through each activity. Since workshop attendees may not have easy access to the facilitator during breakout or small-group sessions, share clear, written instructions for the activities.
Keep in mind, when people work with digital artifacts, there is a common expectation that the artifact is a final draft and must look perfect. Therefore, it helps to populate the collaborative files with other shapes or notes in a deliberately messy way to remove the expectation for perfection. Intentionally using a ridiculous font like Comic Sans or drawing crooked lines can help manage that expectation.
Conclusion
It can be difficult to run a remote workshop as participants struggle to keep their attention in virtual meetings. There are more moving pieces and logistics to consider than in traditional workshop settings, and so many competing priorities and obligations. However, if you plan well, and avoid common pitfalls, you will have an engaging, impactful, and successful workshop.
