One of the roles of a UX team is to share expertise and enable collaboration across an organization by facilitating workshops such as design thinking sessions. The value of these workshops comes from the opportunity to break down silos and the ability to inform group decisions with data, but we experience challenges. How do we scale this process to meet demand? How can we document workshops effectively? How can we ensure we have a measurable impact? Amanda, Oriana, and Mengjiao of the Rapid7 UX Research team will share a facilitation process they developed to enable consistent, high quality, design and systems thinking workshops that are data informed and thoroughly documented in order to quickly deliver value and insights after a workshop. They will discuss some of their strategies and lead you through examples of how to implement a workshop building process adapted to your organization’s needs.

1. The Process is Baked In:
Our Recipe for Successful Workshops

2. 2
Talk Objective
● Our goals and processes
● Tools and techniques
● Inspiration for your process

3. Speakers
Amanda Parkin
Senior UX Researcher
Oriana Ott
UX Researcher II
Mengjiao Li
Incoming UX Researcher II
Place speaker
image here

4. Agenda
● Our Context
● Our Goals
● Our Process
● Conclusion

5. Our Context
Standardizing and scaling our
process
● High demand
● Limited resources
● Variable quality
● Unclear outcomes

6. Crafting the perfect cookie
recipe.
CONSISTENCY
Building a reputation for
excellent cookies.
QUALITY
Delivering cookies that
leave people wanting more.
VALUE
6
Our Goal: Workshop as a Process

7. • Provide high quality
workshop experience for
participants
• Achieve workshop goals
with tangible outcomes
for stakeholders
QUALITY

8. • Reduce effort to plan and
run workshops
• Setting and meeting
business expectations
• Building trust with our
partners
CONSISTENCY

9. • Demonstrate value on the
day of the workshop
• Show ongoing value after
the workshop
• Collect data to iterate and
inform future workshop
experience
VALUE

10. Activity 1:
What challenges do you face when it
comes to planning workshops?

11. Request Kickoff Planning Workshop Follow-Up
Our Process

12. Request
People know we make cookies
and order them.

13. Request
Build awareness of our team’s
capabilities and a means for
requesting facilitation.

14. Research Request Form
Our cookie order form.
Stakeholders request a workshop or
activity through this form.

15. Kickoff
We gather the right ingredients
for our recipe.

16. Kickoff
Grow stakeholder understanding
of workshop methods and gain
alignment on goals and content.

17. Stakeholder Kickoff Guide
Our list of ingredients.
A guide to facilitate our initial kickoff
with stakeholders and collect
relevant details.

18. Planning
We mix the ingredients and
prepare the cookie dough.

19. Planning
Transform stakeholder goals and
content into a facilitation deck and
materials.

20. Facilitation Deck Template
Our finished cookie dough.
A deck template to transform
stakeholder goals into an agenda,
ice breakers, and planned activities.

21. Review with Key Stakeholders and SMEs
Taste testing the cookie dough.
Meeting with stakeholders to review
content and practice the activities.

22. Activity 2:
What challenges do you face when it
comes to conducting workshops?

23. Workshop
We bake the cookies with the help
of our participants.

24. Workshop
Facilitate workshop and collect
data from the activities.

25. Live Readout Technique
Baking the cookies.
A full readout of the day’s activities
fully documented in a slide deck
delivered at the end of the
workshop.

26. Follow-Up
We eat the cookies and ask for
feedback.

27. Follow-Up
Ensure that the work continues
beyond the workshop and that our
process iterates and evolves.

28. Email Recap
Delivering the cookies.
Sharing a full recap of the notes,
outcomes, and next steps from the
day with stakeholders.

29. Post-workshop Survey
Asking how the cookies were.
Surveying the workshop participants
to understand any areas for
improvement.

30. Example Post-Workshop Survey
Internal workshop, 2018
Open-ended feedback:
• More time spent on solutions
• Clarity of instructions
• More closely moderated time to
avoid going over on earlier parts

31. Let’s demonstrate!

32. The Process is Baked In:
Live Readout in Action

33. Today’s Recap
● Activity 1: Workshop Planning Challenges
● Activity 2: Workshop Conducting Challenges
● Summing It Up

34. Activity 1:
What challenges do you face when it
comes to planning workshops?

35. Challenges in Planning Workshops
• Getting people to dedicate time with all the other work they have
• Setting expectations with stakeholders, getting alignment on goals
• What are activities going to be? interacting, engaging, and memorable
• Prep work: did other people do their part?
• Designer/research oriented, getting other disciplines trust/engagement
• Teams in different locations
• Getting a clear understanding of problem from stakeholders

36. Planning Themes
• Understanding goals/problem
• Appropriate activities for
engagement
• Appropriate activities for team
structure/location/background
• Getting other people to do their
part
• Building a good reputation
• Request form
• Kickoff with stakeholders
• Workshop planning
• Building a facilitation deck
• Stakeholder review meeting
Takeaways

37. Activity 2:
What challenges do you face when it
comes to conducting workshops?

38. Challenges in Conducting Workshops
• Keeping stakeholders in the workshop
• Getting people to take ideas with them
• Getting stakeholders to really participate in a useful way
• Post-its and white boards: getting them to write something we can use
• Keeping Subject matter experts from going on tangents
• Key stakeholders wanting to boost pet projects
• Time management for activities
• Bad previous experience: people don’t want to be there
• Remaining unbiased

39. Conducting Themes
• Active engagement in
workshop
• Ongoing engagement after
workshop
• Tangents
• Pet projects/Bias
• Getting things in a usable form
• Facilitation deck components
• Data collection
• Live readout technique
• Email recap
• Post-workshop Survey
Takeaways

40. Why this technique?
• Notes captured during
audience participation
• Preliminary synthesis done
• Participants walk away with a
this information as a jumping
off point

41. Request Kickoff Planning Workshop Follow-Up
Our Process
● Research Request
Form
● Stakeholder Kickoff
Guide
● Stakeholder Review
Meeting
● Facilitation Deck
Template
● Live Readout
Technique
● Email Recap
● Post-workshop
Survey

42. Crafting the perfect cookie
recipe.
CONSISTENCY
Building a reputation for
excellent cookies.
QUALITY
Delivering cookies that
leave people wanting more.
VALUE
42
Our Goal: Workshop as a Process

43. Resources
The templates in the folder below were curated to provide visible examples
of the tools discussed in our talk The Process is Baked In: Our Recipe for
Successful Workshops at UXPA International 2019.
View Folder

44. Email uxresearch@rapid7.com or
connect with us on LinkedIn!
Amanda Parkin
amanda_parkin@rapid7.com
Oriana Ott
oriana_ott@rapid7.com
Mengjiao Li
mengjiao_li@rapid7.com
Thank You.