Workshop Tactics: the best problem-solving workshops in a box

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 Recipe

Various ways to string multiple tactics together to make a longer, more in-depth workshop.

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Team Time

Give a new team the best chance of success.

3-4 hours

Project Kick-off

Get your new project off to the best start.

4 hours

Idea Storm

Put a problem through its paces by gathering lots of ideas, then narrowing down and evaluating them.

3-4 hours

Design Dash

Get your team from blank faces to a testable solution in a couple of days.

2 days

Get Unstuck

A way of probing a team or project to figure out what’s going wrong.

3-4 hours

Retrospective

Look back on successes and failures in order to learn and improve for next time.

1-2 hours

Goals

Agree on a desired end-state to work towards, so daily activity is moving you in the right direction.

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G.R.O.W

Create a plan on how to achieve a specific goal.

1-2 hours

Newspaper Headline

Think about the company’s future by predicting what the press might say on their front pages.

30 mins

Objectives and Key Results

Create radical focus for your team by agreeing on an objective and actively measuring progress towards it.

1 hour

Sailboat

Find out what your goals really are, the reasons behind them and what’s stopping you from achieving them.

1 hour

Sticky Steps

Start with your goal and work backwards to give you a clear path on how to get there.

30 mins

“

It's really valuable to have the physical deck. It can be kept on me and browsed, and not hidden away on a website.

Simon Hurst
UX Researcher

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Understand

Unpack problems and discover insights with critical and analytical thinking exercises.

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Assumption Collecting

Collect assumptions that reflect what you and your team think might be true about the project.

1 hour

Journey Map

Identify areas of improvement in a user’s experience by creating a map of it.

1-2 hours

Service Map

Create a map of a service to understand it better, and identify opportunities for improving processes.

1-2 hours

Empathy Map

Empathise with your audience so you can make better design decisions.

1 hour

Prototype Persona

Try to predict who is using (or will use) your product and why, so you can start testing with the right people.

1 hour

Stakeholder Map

Identify a project’s stakeholders. Anyone who can significantly impact a decision, or who may be impacted by it, needs to be considered.

1 hour

Roles and Responsibilities

Understand each other’s roles better, and learn who is responsible for what.

1 hour

Skills Market

Learn about each other’s skills, abilities and ambitions, so you can understand how to help each other grow.

1 hour

Hopes and Fears

Understand your team’s expectations and hesitations so you’re all on the same page before you take flight on a new journey.

30 mins

Five Whys

When faced with a problem that is affecting a project, ask “Why?” five times to get to the root cause.

30 mins - 1 hour

“

The Workshop Tactics card deck gives me, in the palm of my hand, a thoroughly researched and structured set of methods that bring people together to creatively solve problems.

Markus
Karlsson-Jones.
MMU

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Frame

Articulate your problem or experiment in a clear way, so as to make it easier to start solving or testing.

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Problem Statement

A problem statement that captures the project’s goals, problems and measurable success criteria.

1 hour

Hypothesis Statement

Treat your assumptions as experiments by turning them into testable hypotheses.

30 mins

How might we...

Transform a problem or observation into a solvable question.

1 hour

Value Proposition

Clearly articulate the point of your service or product, who it’s for and what makes it unique.

1 hour

“

Workshop Tactics is the first thing I reach for when presented with a design problem. The solution is always in there. I can't live without them.

Tom Newton
Design Lead, eBay.

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Ideas

Encourage coming up with lots of ideas, then refine the best into more detail.

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Mind Map

Turn all your thoughts into an interconnected map so you have stimulus for idea generation.

30 mins

Idea Eight

Generate a lot of ideas, quickly. Eight 'out there' ideas in eight minutes!

30 mins

Round Robin

Evolve each other's ideas quickly.

30 mins

Storyboard

Draw your idea as a sequence of key moments and real world interactions to better understand how it works.

1-2 hours

Reverse Brainstorm

Think of the worst ideas possible, then reverse them.

1 hour

Get 20+ hours of recorded workshop tutorials to boost your facilitation confidence.

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Evaluate

Assess problems or ideas against certain criteria to understand them better.

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Premortem

Think about all the ways something might go wrong, so you can effectively plan to stop it from happening.

1 hour

Rose, Thorn, Bud

Evaluate something’s positives, negatives and opportunities. Such as an idea, project or a process.

30 mins

SWOT Analysis

Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for a desired end state.

1-2 hours

Heart, Head, Hand

Evaluate the usefulness, emotional resonance and business value of an idea.

30 mins

Idea Beetle

Evaluate if your idea is strong and has “legs”, or if it needs more thinking.

30 mins

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Decide

Prioritise ideas or problems based on your needs in order to decide what to focus on.

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Priority Map

Find out where to focus based on criteria important to the group.

30 mins - 1 hour

Assumption Map

Prioritise your assumptions based on certainty and risk.

1 hour

Impact Effort Map

Group together ideas by how much effort they require to create, and by how much impact they’ll have on your goal.

30 mins - 1 hour

Who, What, When

Leave a meeting with a clear plan of goals and deadlines.

10 mins

$100

Prioritise what ideas or features to focus on by deciding where to invest $100.

20 mins

Secret Vote

Democratically make decisions as a group. Eliminate all but one thing, or find the top three things.

5 mins

Discuss

Facilitate discussion to gain a better understanding of a team and progress towards goals.

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Democratic Discussion

Build a discussion agenda together and keep track of what’s been discussed, and needs to be discussed.

1 hour

Fishbowl

A self-facilitating, inclusive discussion with a large group of people.

1 hour

Start, Stop, Continue

Get balanced feedback from a group on a topic or project.

1 hour

Mad, Sad, Glad

Retrospectively consider and discuss a past project or event.

1 hour

Three Little Pigs

Reflect on what’s going well, and what could be improved with the help of a childhood fable.

1 hour

Get the card deck - used by the BBC, Lyft, Facebook, IDEO and many more

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Technique

Core techniques that are fundamental to facilitating a successful workshop.

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Workshop Checklist

Remind yourself what you need to do before, during and after a workshop.

Session Principles

Creating principles for a meeting or workshop is a 5-10 minute investment resulting in an engaged, productive and more effective group of people.

5-10 mins

Difficult Behaviours

Manage behaviour that derails discussions.

Theme Sort

Cluster similar things together to make sense of it.

10 mins

Ice Breakers

Warm up the room to make people more willing to contribute to the session you are about to run.

10 mins

Meeting Wizard

Set a clear purpose and structure to your meeting.

15 mins

Parking Lot

Keep meetings and workshops on track by “parking” irrelevant questions or topics.

T-Bar Format

Put your ideas into a format that can explain itself.

30 mins