One of the things that worried me the most about working remotely was how to carry on facilitating design thinking workshops. As an interaction designer, this stuff was integral to my role and the projects that needed my input were not slowing down.
We had a really big project coming up to redesign the infrastructure of the mental health content on the NHS website and there was a lot of discovery to do.
I couldn’t block out a few days in people’s diaries for a design sprint as we were all super busy. It felt really unfair to ask people to give me hours of time out of their diaries and there was the all-too-real video call fatigue to be mindful of. I couldn’t book a room and dish out physical worksheets or paper to sketch on. I had to rethink how to keep people engaged and how to get useful outputs to take forward.
I’ve had a few projects to try out some new ideas on how to solve this problem, and here’s a few things that really worked for me:
1. Split up design thinking sessions into smaller, more manageable workshops
In the earlier attempts at running longer design thinking workshops, they almost always ran over. Good conversations and discussions were taking place after one of the main activities, and that meant we had less time for the other ones. For my most recent project, I booked in individual 30–90 min slots for one design thinking activity (or two if they were generally short).
For example separate sessions that cover:
How might we question forming — 30 mins
Understanding user point of view and assumptions mapping -60 mins
Writing problem statements— 45 mins
Ideation — 90 mins
Realistically, these could all be done in a day if you were in person, but people have other things to balance at the moment. Doing it this way helped us focus on one activity and allowed for those good conversations, but not at the expense of another equally as important design thinking activity. It also meant people’s diaries were not blocked out for long, and I could keep people more engaged.
2. Give your participants homework
Another problem with doing things online and remotely is that not everybody might be as comfortable or familiar with the tools used to run the workshop as you are. I’d been part of sessions where most of the session was spent getting people on the collaborative whiteboard or joining the video call.
Before the ideation session I had planned, I asked the participants to sign up to the tool, practice uploading things and familiarising themselves with the tool we’d be using and the content of the workshop, to avoid taking time away from the activities. I sent these instructions just over a week before the session and followed up with a reminder a few days before.
Participants followed the instructions and there were almost no issues with them using the tool when I ran the session. We could get straight into the good stuff.
3. Allow multiple methods of low-fidelity prototyping
During design sprints, you’d normally ask the group to sketch some ideas out that you might want to take forward and prototype. Remotely, this can be a little tricky, as you’re the only one in the room and nobody else can see your drawings unless you upload them.
You can still ask people to draw things and upload them, and hope they have a good camera. Alternatively, you can make use of shapes and tools that come with the collaborative whiteboards or even on Microsoft Word. I asked my participants to use what ever could help them put their idea across. Some opted for the draw and upload method (and the homework of asking them to practice paid off here). But, some used shapes and arrows to simulate a user journey, one took inspiration from images they’d found on a search engine. Regardless of the method, it helped them create a really lo-fi prototype or sketch for the team to consider.
4. Pre-empt technical glitches and create a backup
No matter how many times you ask your participants to learn the tool, there will always be a possibility of the tech itself letting you down. I learned this the hard way. We were in the middle of the sketching session and the participants were all about to upload their creations to the whiteboard when suddenly, it wouldn’t upload anything. The servers had crashed, probably at the worst moment. I had to react quickly to set up another whiteboard on a different tool in order to keep the session afloat. Luckily little momentum was lost and we only overran by about 10–15 minutes.
My advice here is to have a backup ready to go. Backup video calling, backup whiteboard, you name it. It will stop you from losing the momentum of the session and ensure the outputs remain the same. If participants are working directly on the whiteboard tool or any other tool, ask them to take regular screenshots in the event the tool crashes, or if they lose connection.
5. When using collaboration tools — give people their own space
When you’re in a room together, you have your own space in front of you. You can see which pens and other materials people are using, or are heading for. When you’re working online, the lines become blurred. You still have space on your own desk that’s your own, but if you’re working on a whiteboard tool, there aren’t any predefined areas for people to own and you can end up moving or deleting something another person is working on.
For all of my workshops now, I ask people to be explicit on whether or not they’re attending, not just for politeness, but also so I can create them their own working area on our collaboration space; a frame with their name on it. A section of the space with their own shapes, post-its; a space for their own thoughts. This takes away from people moving each others work-in-progress items and brings back that element of having your own table space in front of you to work on. You can also have areas for larger collaboration, where participants can bring what they’ve worked on in isolation over. For these larger spaces, make sure you lock items or make it clear what can be moved or what should stay put; control the chaos a bit! Thanks to Misaki Hata for the inspiration for this, your inclusivity kick off workshop was ace.
Other things I’ve picked up
I’ve taken some pointers from other colleagues and how they’ve run things too. Dave Hunter ran a kick off session for his project, listing out step-by-step instructions next to the activity space that participants could refer to if they needed to go over them. Equally Karl Goldstraw facilitated a designer’s retro and used arrows and frames to simulate a journey from one activity to the next. I’m taking these ideas for some training workshops I’ve got coming up.
These are a selection of thoughts and tips from the last few months of adapting my offline workshops for the online world and I’m sure I’ll pick up even more as time goes on. There’s always room for improvement!
