Become a Better UX Workshop Facilitator
Learn how to plan and run a great UX workshop, and what to do afterwards for continued succcess
If you’ve ever run a strategy workshop, you know that they don’t always go as planned. And if you’ve never served as a facilitator, you might not know how to plan one in the first place. In this article, we’ve compiled everything you need for better workshops — before, during, and after the big day.
UX workshops 101: what, when, and why
A workshop just means you’re getting a group of people together to accomplish a specific goal. The goal could be education, team alignment, decision making, or just exploration that will inform a decision that comes later.
But a workshop is not just a meeting—it’s a lot more focused than that. While meetings could just be for a general status update or discussion, a workshop has a specific goal that will be a achieved through specific, structured activities that were planned in advance.
Unlike meetings, workshops have specific goals that will be achieved through specific, structured activities that were planned in advance.
For example, in a meeting, you might meet with your team to talk about how a project is going or figure out next-steps after you’ve gotten feedback from a client. But if your team has a specific design challenge that needs to be solved quickly, you could plan a workshop where you’d work together to come up with solutions and choose the best one.
As a content strategist working in UX (user experience), I run a lot of workshops. While every client’s needs and challenges are a bit different, I’ve found that the main reasons and benefits of doing the workshop are always the same, and fall into two categories.
The two main reasons to do a workshop:
Alignment: Especially for big teams or organizations, alignment is probably way more important than you think. For example, let’s say a large brand has hired us to do their website content; the brand manager, VP of marketing, and eComm sales manager will probably all have different goals and expectations! When stakeholders all have different goals and expectations that aren’t communicated, chaos can ensue very quickly during a project. This is why we start every project with workshop, and it makes a world of difference for everyone involved.
Decision making and problem solving: If you have a specific thing that needs to get resolved or decided, do a workshop. I promise it will be way more efficient and beneficial than an unstructured meeting. Workshops are ideal for getting things done (we’ll dig into this more later).
Examples of UX / content strategy workshops are:
User journey mapping
Empathy mapping
Brand voice and messaging workshops
Research synthesis workshops
Assumption slams (thanks, Shopify UX team!)
Brainstorming and collaboration workshops
Discovery workshops with stakeholders
Lightning Decision Jams (courtesy of AJ&Smart)
Deliver better UX workshops
Planning and preparation
If you want to run a better workshop, it has much more to do with how you prepare than what you do during. In order for everyone to get the most of their time, you need to have a plan for: goals, attendees, activities, roles and responsibilities, supplies, and course correction. Let’s break each of these things down.
1. Set clear and specific workshop goals
Obviously, if you are planning a workshop, you have a reason for doing it! But how you communicate this goal to the rest of the team makes a huge difference. You need to get specific, use language everyone understands, and frame the goal in a way that makes people care.
If your goals for the meeting are vague—or sound vague to the people attending—they’re less likely to be in the right state of mind to participate fully. For example, instead of saying something like, “Define company brand attributes,” you might say, “Create a brand strategy that will inform the design and content direction of the new website.”
2. Invite (only) the right people
You probably don’t need everyone in your workshop. Armed with your clearly defined goal, make sure you’re only inviting people who need to be there; decision makers and people who could create massive roadblocks to your goal need to be there. Anything more than 10 people is probably unnecessary.
If you find that you have more than ten people, you might need to break your goal into smaller goals. It’s completely valid if you realize you 10+ people who need to be in your workshop… but if that’s the case, consider doing two smaller workshops. If you do end up with a large group, just make sure your workshop activities are going to work within the time you have.
3. Choose and plan specific activities
A workshop without a plan is not a workshop. It’s just an unproductive meeting. Think about your goal and the best way to reach them in the time allotted and with the people you’ll have. Great workshop activities have a good mix of independent (someone working and thinking alone) and group participation. You don’t want people sitting quietly and working alone on their laptop the whole time, but you also don’t want them to get collaboration fatigue (it’s a thing).
4. Define roles and responsibilities
If needed, one person can run a workshop by themselves. I’ve done it and it worked out just fine, but it’s far better if you have a few people onboard to make things run smoothly. Figure out who is doing what ahead of time, and it really helps things go smoother. Plus, everyone is less distracted because they know what they’re supposed to be doing.
In an ideal workshop setting, you’ll have a . . .
Leader or moderator: this person, probably you if you’re reading this, will run the show. They’ll set the agenda and lead people through the workshop activities. They’ll also be in charge of course-correcting if things don’t go as planned.
Note taker: you don’t want anyone who is leading or participating to be distracted with documentation. Dedicate one person to take notes, snap whiteboard photos, etc.
Time keeper (maybe): separately, it’s nice to have someone keep track of time, especially for long workshops. This person is familiar with the agenda and workshop activities ahead of time, and can cue the workshop leader if something is running overtime. No one likes to be late for lunch or their next meeting.
And of course, participants.
5. Supplies and location
Do you have the stuff you need for your workshop? Don’t want until one hour before to find pens, sticky notes, markers, or whatever other supplies you might need for your activities. Also, don’t expect your participants to show up with the right supplies. It’s your job as the workshop host to provide everything.
Think about the location and overall environment, too. Do you need to book a conference room? Do you need to show up early and turn-on the air conditioning? If it’s a full day workshop, what’s the plan for lunch or snacks? You want to remove any environmental stuff that will distract people. If they’re hot, hungry, and cranky, it’s not going be a productive day.
6. Game-plan for course correction
This last one is our best tip, and one I don’t often see other people talk about enough. Before your workshop, think about what you’ll do if something doesn’t work. In other words, for every plan A, have a plan B.
Sometimes, people just don’t “get” what you’re doing. It’s great if you can think on your feet, but it’s better if you prepared a backup activity. I once was running a brand voice workshop and attempted to do a “mad libs” exercise where the clients would fill-in-the-blanks about what their brand sounded like. But they had never heard of mad libs, and were totally confused. You never know how people will respond to workshop ideas you thought were totally brilliant… and then totally flopped.
Facilitation tips and dealing with nerves
If you’re new, nervous, or just want to get better, the best tip I can offer is to practice. The good news is, you mean don’t need to host real, actual workshops to hone your skills. Even practicing alone can make a big difference. Just like giving a speech or important presentation, practice explaining your workshop activities aloud. You can do this at home, with a trusted friend or colleague, and you might even want to record yourself as a way to critique yourself. It’s also great to practice being a participant, and see what it’s like to do any of the workshop activities you’re going to ask other people to do.
The other game-changer? Learn how to read the room.
Being able to subsequently lead your workshop while constantly adapting and adjusting to your participants is what can really change everything. Part of this is about practice, planning, and having a “plan b” for any activity. But the other part is just making yourself conscious to everyone around you.
During workshops, check-in by asking yourself:
Is there anyone who is not participating? If yes, how can I encourage them?
How can I adapt my explanations or activities to fit this particular group of people?
Is this going well, or do I need to do something different in order to better reach our goals?
Deliverables after the workshop
Workshops are exciting. But much like a “sugar high”, your team might feel a crash afterwards — when everyone feels like they’re done, and progress halts. As facilitators, we want to keep the momentum going and make sure that all our hard work is put to good use. Here are a few things you can do.
Send a recap email
Everyone likes to be appreciated. The day after the workshop, send a quick recap email to all the participants. Summarize what you did, highlight any big breakthrough moments, and outline next steps. Sign-off with a big thank you to everyone for participating. This might seem simple and obvious, but not every workshop facilitator does this and it makes a big difference.
Create post-workshop deliverables
A workshop helps you solve problems, get aligned, generate ideas, and even outline a strategy. But you can’t stop at a workshop. The next step as a facilitator is to translate all the hard workshop work into a tangible deliverable. This is a digitized, shareable version of the work.
Potential workshop deliverables:
Brand strategy guide
Content style guide (how-to guide here)
User journey map or empathy map
Content governance framework
Site map, or other information architecture diagrams
User personas
Product road map
Project plan (priorities, goals, timeline)
Present your workshop deliverable
Once you’ve created the deliverable, it’s nice to walk people through it personally instead of just emailing it out (where you risk people ignoring it). The point of any workshop deliverable is to get people on the same page, and help move a project or initiative forward — so it’s imperative that you get eyes on it.
If your deliverable comes in the form of a long document, that’s fine, but you might want to present its contents in a slide deck format instead. Pull out the key points of your document, and find ways to present it visually.