Why Workshops are Central to My Design Practice

A short story on my love affair with design collaboration.

I am starting a mini-series here that outlines the 3 most important tools that I use in my design practice:

1. Workshops

2. Prototypes

3. User Research

If you’ve been consistently reading my posts you’ll know I’ve committed to the brief commentary and curation format so I’ll be making my reflection on the value of these tools pretty short and sweet.

Running a workshop during my tenure at Toi.

I was first introduced to workshops by Jose Caballer and Chris Do. I was looking for a better way to collaborate and align with the clients I was working with. With that in mind, I began training in their program which turned out to be The Futur. Later on, in 2018, I discovered the design sprint, a 5-day workshop, design, and testing process that helps participants solve problems and test new ideas. I fell in love with the sprint process and since then I have been working to master the art of combing design and facilitation to provide great results to the clients that I work with.

Here are a few reasons why I think workshops can be so helpful to a design practice:

1. Collaboration - Collaboration is key to great design work. I will always be on the side that believes that design is a team sport. This is especially true for folks working in or running agencies. Workshops are a great way to create a bridge of clarity and cooperation with clients in a way that creates one single team working on a problem rather than an “agency team” and “stakeholder team”.
   

2. Low-Risk Environments - Often times workshops provide an opportunity to experiment and create new ideas without coding, hi-fi designs, or full implementation. There definitely are some time and resource costs to consider but these costs are still low compared to the cost of building and shipping something without the strategy and experimentation a good workshop can provide.
   

3. Actionable Results - The thing I hate most about typical meetings is that a lot of talking happens with little to no doing. I’ve seen some great ideas die in a meeting that could’ve been kept alive with a workshop. A good workshop requires tangible takeaways and to-dos in a way most meetings can’t do.

There are many more reasons to integrate workshops into your practice but hopefully, these 3 will help you at least think about making the leap into workshop facilitation!

Now to some of my favorite things of the week:

1. A book that I can’t wait to dive into - Design & Strategy by Wanda Grimsgaard.
   

   This is a massive book that I am looking forward to reading. It’s so massive though that I am expecting this to be a reference book anytime I need to look up something that I feel might be missing from a project I am working on. The description gets me pretty pumped to dive in: This major practical handbook bridges the gap between strategy and design, presenting a step-by-step design process with a strategic approach and extensive methods for innovation, strategy development, design methodology, and problem-solving.
   

2. My favorite talk from the recent Figma Config conference - Leading through uncertainty: Navigating uncertainty - Haraldur Thorleifsson
   

   You can’t help but be inspired by Haraldur’s journey and perseverance. This is someone I definitely look up to and I appreciate the authenticity he shares in this talk.
   

3. Speaking of Figma a good reminder that there’s much more to design than the tool

4. Another good reminder from Felix Lee at ADP List:

   

5. A hobby I want to try: Pixel Art - I messed around with creating some pixel art earlier this year and I want to get back into it. If you’re interested in nerding out with me, check out this video by Brandon James Greer.

Cheers,
Zach