Facilitating effective design workshops

Use your design skills to help your team find a direction that most benefits your users.

Brainstorms and workshops can be a highly impactful, quick way to align one or more groups of people in a short amount of time. However, I often hear people—non-designers and designers alike—speak negatively of these activities. I’ve heard folks say workshops are a waste of time, that they only serve to build the facilitator’s career, and other logical fallacies based on anecdotal evidence.

The issue is that many people either don’t know how or when to run workshops. Well-considered, well-facilitated workshops are not a waste of time. Poorly-planned activities that have no basis in the context of the organization or team’s needs will never be successful.

So how can we facilitate effective brainstorms? I’m going to share the five qualities of a successful brainstorm facilitator. These recommendations come from approximately 10 years of experience facilitating various workshops and classes, both in and outside my role as a designer.

Be prepared

If you’re organizing ad hoc group activities without defining the need, expected outcomes, and timeline, you’re starting off poorly. You don’t need to spend weeks preparing for a 1-hour sketching session. You do need to come with an explanation regarding why everyone has gathered—and what will happen after the session ends.