Selecting Effective Workshop Tasks

Having defined goals and set an agenda for a workshop are a crucial first step. But what happens during the workshop is even more critical. Last time, we looked at how to define goals and attendees. This time we’ll look at the tasks and activities you choose to use, and how they’re determined by your stated goals. In the last post, these were our workshop goals:

Let’s take a look at a few common types of tasks we can use to get there.

Brainstorming

The task of brainstorming simply asks participants to generate information. It’s not important exactly what they generate, as long as it’s on topic and there’s a lot of it. Using post-its, paper, and other tools for quick documentation are essential. One participant should be assigned as a scribe, so every idea is taken down. Participants should not be evaluating the worth of the ideas, just making a lot of them.

Sketching and ideation

Sketching and drawing activities ask participants to generate versions or concepts of a general idea. Sketching wireframes, tools, or content structures for example. This process is a bit more focused, as there is a concrete topic or interface structure everyone is riffing on.

Ranking and rating

Ranking is putting existing options or ideas in order from best to worst, or from one to five—just like the Olympics, where only one person can win gold, silver, or bronze. Rating is assigning a value to existing options. More than one option can have the same rating, like on Yelp, where lots of restaurants have three or four stars. These tasks force attendees to use discussion and debate to evaluate existing options and how they relate to each other.

Mapping

Mapping asks attendees to provide suggested actions based on certain constraints or criteria. It can mean mapping pathways through research questions, an interface, or even product delivery strategies. The key is that the obstacles to success are previously defined, and the attendees choose procedures that minimize those risks.

Connecting tasks and goals

These activities form a core set that you can rely on in any workshop. Regardless of the specific steps in the task, it needs to relate to your goal. Let’s look again at our example.

We want to define UX research on a new product feature. This means it’s at the beginning and all wide open. A brainstorming activity would work well here, as you want to uncover new ideas and interface concepts.

We also want to decide on a set of research questions. This could call first for ideation on a general question format, and then ranking or rating to choose research questions the team feels will be most effective.

Finally, in order to show the value of the workshop and research in general, we want to demonstrate the power of UX research internally. There are a few ways to connect this goal with the activities. First, we can brainstorm a short list of internal company objections to UI and product changes. Then, we map our research questions to those objections, in essence forcing our research to prove them right or wrong. We’re making a direct link between information we want to get, and how it will affect design changes.

Setting up and running tasks

Now that you have some ideas of tasks to run and have connected them to the goals, we can go over how to actually set it all up in the workshop.

• Introduce the task. Say what you will be doing, and why. Restate the workshop goals, even if you don’t think you need to.
• Set teams. Keep the energy focused by assigning teams and groups. If you have a set of particularly outspoken attendees, make sure they are in a group that is able to work with more vocal attendees. I often ask workshop groups to choose a topical name (ice-cream flavors, colors, etc.) as it fosters a group identity.
• Assign a scribe. By asking one team member to document their task, you do two things: force the team to record their decisions, and create a shareable record for those who did not attend. (Remember how our third goal was to demonstrate the power of UX research?)
• Set a time limit. Everyone loves a finish line. By telling people exactly how long they have to finish a task, you tell them that their time is important and that this will be a focused session.
• Let them work. Stop talking and let the attendees complete the task. As the facilitator, you only need to intercede if people are confused or completely off topic.
• Review. Once the time is up, call everyone back to the larger group and either solicit conclusions, or state them yourself. Even for a small groups, review is critical to making sure everyone is on the same page.

Workshops are hard work. A lot of that comes in the preparation, but carefully choosing tasks that match your stated goals is also key to success. Think carefully about what you want attendees to do, and then define the activities to achieve that. Explain what will be happening, as many times as necessary, and then step back and act as a facilitator, the person in charge, so they don’t need to worry about it. Each of these steps sets you up for success. But people are complex, and not every workshop goes according to the plans you set out. In the third installment of this series, we’ll look at some techniques for dealing with difficult attendees.