DESIGN WORKSHOPS
No two workshops should be the same. Here are two good stories where I created and facilitated personalized workshops for two very different clients.
IDEATE NEW PRODUCTS, TEACH THE METHOD, AND BUILD AN ARMY IN 3 DAYS
After three days of a tightly packed schedule, participants presented five new and unique ideas that solve real customer problems, focusing on how to enable teams to produce quality products. They walked away with a deeper understanding of their customers' experience and needs, familiarity with design thinking techniques, pride in emerging successfully from a new type of challenge, confidence in their ability to use the methods elsewhere, and happiness about their deeper colleague relationships. My client presented to the Board, and funding is being considered.
PROBLEM/CHALLENGE
The Board of Directors of my client's organization tapped her team to pinpoint undiscovered, unsolved problems hindering their customers and propose solutions to edge out their competitors. She had one month to provide a shortlist of new solutions - not enhancements - that don't compete with any of the 23 tools they already had in their portfolio.
Being design-minded, she wanted to gather ideas via a multi-disciplinary workshop, taking an outside-in approach to understanding the target users' situation and pains while including a variety of people from around the organization. Another success factor: the workshop needed to be a smashing success, showing leadership the power of design-thinking and energizing participants in ways that their day-to-day work might not.
INDUSTRY
Technology
DURATION
3 weeks
TEAM
UX Researcher
Product Designer
VP Design and Experience
RESULT
I ran a 3-day design thinking workshop with a broad cross-section of people (18 participants representing 8 business units from 4 countries). We took the participants through multiple design-thinking exercises to enable divergent thinking and then converge on solutions. Throughout, we had 8 expert speakers to educate the participants on macro and micro trends in the industry, present user research, and provide context about the competitive landscape.
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Teams moved on to clearly articulate the market, the user, the problem to solve, and a proposed solution (to be further studied if funded). The workshop culminated with five presentations to the Chief Product Officer, CTO, and VP of Design and Experience.
Example slide from a jam-packed workshop that generated five new product ideas.
QUICKLY DEVELOP A DESIGN-THINKING WORKSHOP AND CHANGE THE WAY OUR COMPANY THINKS
We had two days to develop a killer workshop and we nailed it. We collaborated with the team on the fly, and pulled off a workshop that achieved all the stated goals within 6 hours (including a working lunch). It was a blast!
PROBLEM/CHALLENGE
A very valuable client asked for a favor. He had around 30 people from across his organization attending a workshop the next week. He wasn't impressed with how the facilitators were approaching the day and needed to replace the leads.
The workshop was to achieve two goals: figure out how to be Canada's #1 First Job and instill Design Thinking sensibilities into the corporate DNA that suffered from insular, old-fashioned ways of thinking. Then, using what we learned from the workshop, we were to create a high-fidelity prototype of a digital solution. We had two days to plan activities and get plane tickets to Toronto.
INDUSTRY
Retail
DURATION
2 weeks
TEAM
Digital strategist​
​Creative director
Account director
RESULT
Via google sheets and airport conversations, we developed a custom-tailored workshop to lead 30 corporate-level employees of varying DT acumen (some had never heard of it, some had been exposed and were critical) through steps to empathize and develop multiple ideas to improve the work lives of their front-line retail colleagues. Post-workshop, my team and I took the ideas further, cataloging and prioritizing the user needs and business opportunities, and developing a prototype of the most viable idea in the form of a high-level workflow that illustrated how the key user types could digitally interact to solve basic employee needs.
Prototype of MVP for client to become Canada’s #1 First Job.