Objective

Deliverables

We will use rapid prototyping to design our workshop. But before we can create the first draft or workshop skeleton we must understand it’s purpose.

I usually start with a short brainstorming exercise on the expected outcomes with team members or the people for whom I design the workshop. The outcomes can still evolve during the process but it is crucial to start with a first working hypothesis.

(To start with the deliverables and not the goal might sound like a chicken egg problem. If the objective is already set, this is also a valid starting point. My experience taught me to start nevertheless with the deliverables as this helps also to validate the intended workshop goal right away.)

If the workshop is for example about knowledge exchange / teaching you will adjust those questions:

You can use the Alone Together technique to brainstorm desired deliverables in a group:

Goal

Having build up a common understanding of what we want to get out of the workshop, it is already much easier to define the workshop goal. Don’t block yourself with anything definite. Things change, especially when you plan larger and more complex workshops but it is essential to come up with a first idea about the workshop goal based on the intended deliverables

Examples:

You can use the “How might we … ?” technique to phrase the workshop goal in a way that encourages collaboration:

Participants

Who is needed?

Next, we want to find out who is needed to achieve those results. If you are in digital product development and want to run a Design Thinking workshop you will ask:

You will need different participants for different purposes.

I was running a workshop on customer engagement and wanted to inform about the status quo of behavioral analysis. For this purpose I just needed an expert who shared his insights and therefore, a short presentation was included in the workshop.

For another workshop I needed participants to step into the shoes of users who have certain negative experiences with a software that we want to improve. In this case, we included customer interviews in the workshop where customers could explain their situation and were available for a ten minutes Q+A session that the workshop participants could build up a better understanding of the situation.

In case you design a workshop for knowledge exchange / teaching purposes you will adjust this question:

If there is a huge stakeholder interest in the outcomes of your workshop you might additionally do a quick stakeholder map to get a better understanding of the deliverables based on varying stakes:

How many participants are needed?

The maximum number of participants depends heavily on the type of workshop you are running. In case of a Design Thinking workshop or Design Sprints there should be around eight to ten participants. For such workshops it is crucial that the group is very diverse in order to bring different expertise together.

Be careful not to have too many participants, as this makes facilitation very challenging. The more people you have, the less engagement you can expect from the entire group, and you will have to manage participants who adopt a passive role. Keeping the number of participants to the minimum will help run an engaging workshop that includes everyone.

Who will be in the room?

Most important is that you know who is in the room. It is crucial to inform yourself upfront about the participants. Platforms such as linkedin are helpful to get upfront a better understanding of job titles and project roles. It is also important to understand the organizational structure to see who will have which influence.

Ask questions such as:

Be aware of challenging group dynamics or conflicting interests:

Timing and breaks

Breaks

Breaks are very important, especially when your workshop takes longer than 90 minutes. As a rule of thumb plan short breaks of 10 – 15 minutes every 60 or 90 minutes. A lunch break should be minimum 60 minutes as this is a good opportunity for participants to get to know each other.

Timing

If you run a workshop longer than one day give your participants the opportunity to catch up with their work that they are not distracted. In such cases it is best to start the workshop earliest at 10:00 and close it around 16:00. This will give your participants time to check in with their teams and get most urgent work done outside the workshop.

Energizers and Warm-ups

Prepare a couple of energizers that you can run whenever the energy level goes down.

Warm-ups

Warm-ups are a good opportunity that the participants get to know each other from a completely different, more playful perspective. I start every longer workshop with a short warm-up exercise that is connected to the topic of the workshop.

For example, when we run a workshop where we wanted to come up with a product vision on the last day of the workshop and wanted to motivate participants to think about the bigger picture and collect already ideas, we created a warm up where we shared ideas how our planet might be in the year 2100. We found a nice research where people all over the world where asked to provide their vision. We created postcards from 2100 with those vision statements and asked participants to pick a vision that speaks to them and share briefly why this postcard / vision is important for them. This activity allowed the participants to share something about their world view and at the same time it gave us a good opportunity to introduce the vision topic.

Another warm up example that helps for example with prototyping is the Weather App exercise. Prototyping is often connected to sketching and participants can be scared of this activity. Also, we rarely need perfect prototypes. All that is needed in the phase of problem understanding and first solution assumptions is rapid prototyping. Asking the participants to think about the perfect weather app for themselves is an easy exercise to break the “ice”. How might the perfect weather app look like for you? You have 3 minutes to quickly draw your perfect weather app and share it with the group. (In case people struggle they are encouraged to draw what they like about any existing weather app.) This is usually a fun exercise and participants understand that they don’t have to be afraid of prototyping.

Workshop skeleton

High altitude view

By now we have all crucial information collected to create a first rapid prototype of our workshop. Don’t try to already go in all details. Look at your workshop from a 2000 altitudes view to create a first flow with your exercises in mind.

At this stage you start with an empty page and you don’t focus on the activities itself. In the first draft we just want to get a feeling for breaks and how much time we have for activities. We want to have a general overview how much time we can dedicate to activities and how many activities will fit in our workshop slot. A specific activity usually takes 60 to max. 90 minutes. Afterwards you plan 10 minute breaks.

Ideally, the workshop “chunks” are connected together and create a natural flow. That means, the results of one task are the foundation or starting point for the next task. Building a logical sequence gives you as facilitator the power to pause and review what has already been achieved and to share the overall journey with participants whenever needed. This creates a feeling of achievement and shared objectives among the whole group.

Additionally, having a well structured workshop and a natural flow takes a lot of pressure from the facilitator as the flow will guide you. This makes it also much easier to improvise in case a course direction is needed throughout the workshop. Having a clear flow allows also to plan for alternatives and foresee potential challenges.

Typical start scenarios

Below some generic steps at the beginning of a full day on-site workshop:

1. Arriving: give people time to arrive, be welcomed individually, have a coffee and to settle in.
2. Introduction: share the objective of the workshop. This is also a good opportunity to explain the deliverables.
3. Participants: let the participants know why they matter for this workshop.
4. Agenda: explain the flow of the workshop the participants can expect.
5. Workshop format: let people know how the workshop will be executed. In case of a Design Thinking workshop, I usually explain the methodology and why we are working this way
6. Rules: what are the rules of the workshop. You might highlight that we you will have one conversation at a time; that we will focus on the workshop and personal calls have to be taken outside the workshop space; in a multicultural context the language; etc.
7. Warm-up exercise: if applicable to your workshop a warm-up is a great tool to bring everyone to the working and collaboration mode

(Without time for arriving and the warm-up exercise this doesn’t take more than 10 minutes.)

In case of a remote workshop you need additionally plan time to make sure everyone can access the digital whiteboard tool you are using. It is also important to do a quick onboarding to the tool itself.

In case of more complex workshops you might even do a short kick-off call before the workshop to make sure you will not run into tech issues and the participants can already try out and play with the digital tool. What also works well is to ask participants to provide some data about themselves via the digital whiteboard tool for the introduction round. This way you can already see who has issues accessing or using the tool.

Typical closing scenarios

At the end of each day / end of the workshop plan some time to

1. Recap the achievements.
2. Expectation management: let the participants know what will happen with the workshop deliverables and how you will provide them with the workshop results.
3. Feedback: you can either do this anonymized or ask the participants for direct feedback.

Feedback is always crucial to improve on your workshop designs. For example, you can ask what you should keep doing or stop doing.

Plan buffers

It is also important to keep buffers in mind. There is always something unexpected coming up. Also, bear in mind that people don’t like running late. Nobody will complain if the workshop delivers the results faster and ends a little bit earlier.

Scheduling

Save-the-date

Sending a “Save the Date” invitation prior to a workshop is essential as it provides participants with ample time to mark their calendars and ensures they are available.

Technical pre-alignment

In case of remote workshop it can be useful to conduct a 15 minutes pre-alignment meeting where you make sure every participant can access and use the digital white board tool.

Be prepared that participants will use different operating system, keyboard layouts or input devices (trackpad, mouse).

On the next page we will use one simple co-creation workshop to see how a workshop evolves in iterations: