ThoughtWorks
  • Contact
  • Español
  • Português
  • Deutsch
  • 中文
Go to overview
  • Engineering Culture, Delivery Mindset

    Embrace a modern approach to software development and deliver value faster

    Intelligence-Driven Decision Making

    Leverage your data assets to unlock new sources of value

  • Frictionless Operating Model

    Improve your organization's ability to respond to change

    Platform Strategy

    Create adaptable technology platforms that move with your business strategy

  • Experience Design and Product Capability

    Rapidly design, deliver and evolve exceptional products and experiences

    Partnerships

    Leveraging our network of trusted partners to amplify the outcomes we deliver for our clients

Go to overview
  • Automotive
  • Cleantech, Energy and Utilities
  • Financial Services and Insurance
  • Healthcare
  • Media and Publishing
  • Not-for-profit
  • Public Sector
  • Retail and E-commerce
  • Travel and Transport
Go to overview

Featured

  • Technology

    An in-depth exploration of enterprise technology and engineering excellence

  • Business

    Keep up to date with the latest business and industry insights for digital leaders

  • Culture

    The place for career-building content and tips, and our view on social justice and inclusivity

Digital Publications and Tools

  • Technology Radar

    An opinionated guide to technology frontiers

  • Perspectives

    A publication for digital leaders

  • Digital Fluency Model

    A model for prioritizing the digital capabilities needed to navigate uncertainty

  • Decoder

    The business execs' A-Z guide to technology

All Insights

  • Articles

    Expert insights to help your business grow

  • Blogs

    Personal perspectives from ThoughtWorkers around the globe

  • Books

    Explore our extensive library

  • Podcasts

    Captivating conversations on the latest in business and tech

Go to overview
  • Application process

    What to expect as you interview with us

  • Grads and career changers

    Start your tech career on the right foot

  • Search jobs

    Find open positions in your region

  • Stay connected

    Sign up for our monthly newsletter

Go to overview
  • Conferences and Events
  • Diversity and Inclusion
  • News
  • Open Source
  • Our Leaders
  • Social Change
  • Español
  • Português
  • Deutsch
  • 中文
ThoughtWorksMenu
  • Close   ✕
  • What we do
  • Who we work with
  • Insights
  • Careers
  • About
  • Contact
  • Back
  • Close   ✕
  • Go to overview
  • Engineering Culture, Delivery Mindset

    Embrace a modern approach to software development and deliver value faster

  • Experience Design and Product Capability

    Rapidly design, deliver and evolve exceptional products and experiences

  • Frictionless Operating Model

    Improve your organization's ability to respond to change

  • Intelligence-Driven Decision Making

    Leverage your data assets to unlock new sources of value

  • Partnerships

    Leveraging our network of trusted partners to amplify the outcomes we deliver for our clients

  • Platform Strategy

    Create adaptable technology platforms that move with your business strategy

  • Back
  • Close   ✕
  • Go to overview
  • Automotive
  • Cleantech, Energy and Utilities
  • Financial Services and Insurance
  • Healthcare
  • Media and Publishing
  • Not-for-profit
  • Public Sector
  • Retail and E-commerce
  • Travel and Transport
  • Back
  • Close   ✕
  • Go to overview
  • Featured

  • Technology

    An in-depth exploration of enterprise technology and engineering excellence

  • Business

    Keep up to date with the latest business and industry insights for digital leaders

  • Culture

    The place for career-building content and tips, and our view on social justice and inclusivity

  • Digital Publications and Tools

  • Technology Radar

    An opinionated guide to technology frontiers

  • Perspectives

    A publication for digital leaders

  • Digital Fluency Model

    A model for prioritizing the digital capabilities needed to navigate uncertainty

  • Decoder

    The business execs' A-Z guide to technology

  • All Insights

  • Articles

    Expert insights to help your business grow

  • Blogs

    Personal perspectives from ThoughtWorkers around the globe

  • Books

    Explore our extensive library

  • Podcasts

    Captivating conversations on the latest in business and tech

  • Back
  • Close   ✕
  • Go to overview
  • Application process

    What to expect as you interview with us

  • Grads and career changers

    Start your tech career on the right foot

  • Search jobs

    Find open positions in your region

  • Stay connected

    Sign up for our monthly newsletter

  • Back
  • Close   ✕
  • Go to overview
  • Conferences and Events
  • Diversity and Inclusion
  • News
  • Open Source
  • Our Leaders
  • Social Change
Blogs
Select a topic
View all topicsClose
Technology 
Agile Project Management Cloud Continuous Delivery  Data Science & Engineering Defending the Free Internet Evolutionary Architecture Experience Design IoT Languages, Tools & Frameworks Legacy Modernization Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Microservices Platforms Security Software Testing Technology Strategy 
Business 
Financial Services Global Health Innovation Retail  Transformation 
Careers 
Career Hacks Diversity & Inclusion Social Change 
Blogs

Topics

Choose a topic
  • Technology
    Technology
  • Technology Overview
  • Agile Project Management
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Data Science & Engineering
  • Defending the Free Internet
  • Evolutionary Architecture
  • Experience Design
  • IoT
  • Languages, Tools & Frameworks
  • Legacy Modernization
  • Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence
  • Microservices
  • Platforms
  • Security
  • Software Testing
  • Technology Strategy
  • Business
    Business
  • Business Overview
  • Financial Services
  • Global Health
  • Innovation
  • Retail
  • Transformation
  • Careers
    Careers
  • Careers Overview
  • Career Hacks
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Social Change
Experience DesignTechnology

Facilitating Collaborative Design Workshops

Jason Furnell Jason Furnell

Published: Apr 21, 2013

A step-by-step guide for rapidly creating a shared vision for execution

So how do you do great design in a rapid, multidisciplinary and inclusive way? How do you set up new projects for success in a fast moving, agile environment? How do you ensure shared understanding and ownership of new initiatives in just a few days?

I now focus a lot of time on facilitating collaborative design workshops, and other methods focused on quickly creating a shared understanding of objectives and buy-in for and execution approach.

In my experience if you set up a new project well a good team can then pick up the ball and run with it. On the other hand, if a project has a wobbly start – with a lack of vision and differing understanding of the objectives – then even the best team can be doomed to failure.

So before I bore you to death talking about it, I will start with a timelapse video of a Collaborative design workshop showing the kind of thing I am going to talk about.

Below is a photo of the core team discussing the final Sketchboard. It's worth noting that there are also priority and sequencing notes – so it's a definition of both what to build, and how to go about it.

What's the output?

Again, before I smother you with the detail of how to do it, I will start with the typical output of 3-4 days of collaborative design workshops. This example was part of a 2-week build Inception. The output was used to drive technical story writing, estimation and planning for agile build phase.

The outputs:

  • Business Model Canvas: A definition of who our customers are, what value we will be delivering to them, and how the business will deliver this value – framing the business drivers / objectives and resource required by the project.
  • Customer Journey Maps: Exploring the typical journey customers will experience when attempting to extract value from our services. Their motivations, goals and fears and how these define “moments of opportunities” in their journeys. Or more simply, “How might we…” add real value for our customers.
  • Design Sketchboards: A way of translating “How might we…” design challenges into design solutions. A sketch based method for rapidly developing and sharing design concepts. In the end, it's the Design Sketchboards that are the real deliverable of these workshops. They represent a great starting point for either writing stories for estimation, or as a clear brief for a UX designer to develop an interactive prototype for customer testing and business validation.

Kicking Off

If you're gathering 10-15 people together for workshops, taking 50% of their time for a number of days then you're asking for a big commitment and YOU BETTER HAVE A PLAN!

You need to be clear about when they need to be there (I use 2 x 2 hour workshops per day), what process they will go on (sample assets always help) and most importantly a strict and clear schedule of activities and timing for each activity. If you're going to work them hard, then you need a whip. Having a plan is the whip.

Pre-planning the teams is also a good idea in order to ensure a good mix of disciplines. A sample 3-day workshop agenda is shown below.

Understanding the business objectives and drivers

I use the business model canvas, objective statements and other fairly standard inception activities to drive out a shared understanding of the Business Drivers. If you're starting an inception workshop there is a good chance there is someone standing there with a bucket of money and some expectations. It's good to start by understanding what these expectations are. I have posted about the business model canvas before – so won't go into too much detail here.

Below is a time-lapse of me facilitating the session. What I think is clear is that you need a clear, predefined structure, plenty of wall space and (this is the hard bit) the ability to rapidly make sense of the flow of post-it notes that are developed during the session. I have created a set of cheat cards to help facilitate these sessions.

Understand the customer journey

Mapping out the customer journey lets you understand the real world experience for your customers, and describes the context within which your service will exist.

The value in developing customer journeys is two fold:

  • The “how might we…” design challenges are an excellent design brief for the next sketch design phase. The process ensures that you have coverage across the entire journey – not just focusing on one small (and usually hard to implement) part of the application.
  • You get shared understanding of the context – an understanding of the technology solution in the context of a real life person, doing real life things, with real life motivations, fears and goals

Design the experience together – using a design sketchboard

Design Sketchboards are a place to explore flows, sketch ideas and collaboratively build up a vision for the experience design for key areas within the service. I was first introduced to this way of working via Leah Buley and Brandon Schauer from Adaptive path. Much of what I describe below is based on their method, as are the 1-up and 6-up templates.

As the name suggests, it requires people to sketch. Now you may think this is challenging for some people, but all you need to do is give them the right tools and train them up a bit. If you can sprinkle UXers or other people you know who can draw around the teams, it helps.

Again, I have Adaptive path / UXweek 2010 to thank for reminding me about getting back to basics with drawing. There was a time when I simply thought sketching was a waste of time (I could do it a thousand times quicker in fireworks, and generate interactive prototypes really quickly) BUT what I missed is the shared, team aspect that getting everyone to draw brings with it.

Learning to draw – tool up and warm up

Moving from chicken scratches to what looks like professional sketching is mainly a matter of tools and process. The tools you need are a range of good quality pens and markers – see below. The process is basically :

  • Use the 1-up and 6-up templates – it builds confidence
  • Start drawing with the thinnest pen (this is where most people stop)
  • Give the drawing structure with the thicker Sharpie
  • Push areas forward and back using the grey marker
  • Highlight key areas with yellow

To warm up, start with drawing boxes and then move to practising drawing some fictional website homepage.

Next steps

Sketchboards are a just a jumping off point for :

  • Customer / Business Validation
  • Experience Prototyping
  • Story writing and estimation

You need to be confident that you have done “Just enough” in order to ensure you have :

  • Explored a range of ideas
  • Selected and built on the best ones
  • A vision for execution that is clear and shared

I hope this helps you in some way. I have run a few of these sessions and, while exhausting, they can be very effective and the tech and business people love them. Once you stop working in isolated “expert” mode (the default for most UXers) and start working collaboratively, it's hard to turn back. It's simply a more effective, faster and more satisfying way to work.

 

  • What we do
  • Who we work with
  • Insights
  • Careers
  • About
  • Contact

WeChat

×
QR code to ThoughtWorks China WeChat subscription account

Media and analyst relations | Privacy policy | Modern Slavery statement ThoughtWorks| Accessibility | © 2021 ThoughtWorks, Inc.