Virtual design thinking is a highly collaborative and iterative process, 5 steps of the virtual design thinking workshop, virtual design thinking and how it can be used, Best Practices for Quickly Converting In-Person Training to Effective Virtual Learning, How We Pivoted To Virtual Design Thinking: Lessons Learned For Virtual Workshop Design. The best collection of eLearning articles, eLearning concepts, eLearning software, and eLearning resources. Now it’s time for action! Discover 5 virtual training case studies to spark inspiration for your learning portfolio. We had two CoDesign experiences sold and no way to travel. With the help of technology, you can effectively bring people together remotely and create meaningful experiences to … That’s the key to innovation! We have seen better and more learner-centric solutions, greater stakeholder and team buy-in, and stronger team engagement as a result of our CoDesign experience. Virtual Design Thinking Workshops strip-down innovation processes to their core functions, making them a lot cheaper, as costs are only produced where value is created in return. Jeff Warren (Barkley Consulting Group) is offering a 5-session virtual Design Thinking Workshop for PMILIC members. On another level, Design Thinking projects often take place not only at the expense of the departments involved but also at the expense of our environment. Although it’s not strictly a linear process, the design thinking framework will take you through the following phases: You can learn more about the design thinking process (and why it’s anything but linear) in this guide. However, we’ve taken the all-important step of establishing a clear purpose for the workshop; we’ll narrow the challenge down later on as part of the workshop itself. If you’re running the workshop for your own company, you’ll already have a challenge in mind. So, in addition to getting your own tools set up, you’ll also want to send a list of necessary materials to your participants well in advance. Having facilitated design thinking workshops for a wide variety of companies across different industries, Brittni finds that most—if not all—teams can benefit: “Design thinking workshops are a way for people to work together on a problem systematically. Design Thinking encourages out of the box thinking so be sure to encourage this too! The joy of remote work in general is that anyone with an internet connection can get involved—there’s no such thing as geographical boundaries! We know how impactful virtual training experiences can be—we quite literally wrote the book on it—but we still had reservations about how successful this transformation would be. The aim is to come up with a wide variety of solutions—and, with a diverse group of participants, you’ll find that everybody has a slightly different take on the challenge. In the first section, we’ll show you how to plan your remote workshop. A guide to the most important ideation techniques. Prioritize what you need to prioritize then come back to the rest later. If you do want to use a specific system, be sure to communicate that as part of your introduction. This is where the iterative nature of design thinking really comes into play; you may find that one solution worked really well, but you might also find that you need to go back and redefine your problem statement or spend a bit more time getting to know your users. Pre-pandemic, the live workshop typically ran for two to three consecutive days to facilitate the momentum required to work through each stage. Virtual CoDesign also needed an additional role: a Producer. Design Thinking has become an extremely popular approach to problem-solving—not only among designers, but across all areas of business.A Design Thinking workshop will spark innovation, foster a user-centric mindset, and get cross-functional teams working together towards a common goal. How to run a remote design thinking workshop: A step-by-step guide​​​​​​​, How to make sure your remote design thinking workshop runs smoothly: Tips and best practices​​​​​​​, learn more about the design thinking process (and why it’s anything but linear) in this guide, plenty of activity templates to choose from, What is ideation? Whether you are already committed to the idea or are just starting to explore design thinking and virtual workshop design, download Virtual Training—SweetRush Style: 5 Inspiring Case Studies For A Learner-Centered Approach. The users? If we dare say so, our new virtual design thinking workshop has matched, if not surpassed, our in-person experience. This time, we knew we had to complete all 5 steps of the virtual design thinking workshop. They put their expertise to the test, transformed one of their own workshops, and made some discoveries along the way. Design thinking workshop is an essential part of our work at IBM. Our facilitators are highly skilled at running live design thinking workshops, but the complex and nuanced virtual environment was new for them. One of our favorites is the animal sketching game, where participants are given one minute to draw a specific animal, followed by thirty seconds to draw another animal, and finally, ten seconds to draw another. Next, they identified and converted activities that would quickly and easily transition to a virtual classroom. The next segment of your workshop is dedicated to ideation—coming up with ideas and potential solutions to address the user problem. Design thinking is unique in its focus on user-centric problem-solving: you’re not just coming up with ideas that could benefit the business, but rather, taking a rare opportunity to really step into your users’ shoes and understand them on a deeper level. Do you need to get it done? If you don’t have your own success story, sharea case study from another company. Let’s do it. Your participants should know the importance of the workshop, and that they’ve been invited to take part because their input is valued. As with any kind of workshop, it’s crucial to make sure you’ve got the right tools to hand. This is a short session where everyone has to present one assumption they have about the user, and then we all discuss whether or not that assumption is actually valid. We’ve included recommended time allocations for each item, giving you a total workshop duration of four hours (including three 15 minute breaks, and some buffer time). If you’re an external facilitator, it’s important to discuss expectations with those who have called upon your expertise. [1] Best Practices for Quickly Converting In-Person Training to Effective Virtual Learning, Oups. My company—a solution provider with a fully remote workforce—is no stranger to crafting virtual workshops and training solutions for clients. Brittni’s signature tried-and-tested approach is to start with a story: “There will be some design thinking skeptics in the room, so I like to kick off with a story. And as the word gets out about virtual design thinking and how it can be used to create effective, learner-centric solutions, demand is increasing. Whether you’re an experienced design thinking workshop facilitator looking to adapt your practice for remote life, or a manager looking to foster collaboration across dispersed teams, this guide is for you. Design Thinking Workshop - Virtual. Before you go, there are some best practices to bear in mind—especially when it comes to facilitating remotely. An extremely busy and chaotic staff canteen. Stay on top of the latest eLearning news, resources and offers. Pick ONE out of 4 LIVE interactive workshops, customized to your level of Design Thinking. Why run a remote design thinking workshop? And we did. Virtual and Remote Design Thinking Workshops We use design thinking to design and facilitate virtual and remote design thinking workshops for our clients! However, don’t share the exact timeline with your participants: communicate when the workshop will begin and end, how often the breaks will be, and the activities they can anticipate, but don’t make the timings known. Delivered by Design Thinking Coaches All our workshops are designed and delivered by our team of Design Thinking Coaches with backgrounds in health, fitness, nutrition, wellbeing, communication and business, supported by education experts. Prototype. Design Thinking has become an extremely popular approach to problem-solving—not only among designers, but across all areas of business.A Design Thinking workshop will spark innovation, foster a user-centric mindset, and get cross-functional teams working together towards a … What I've learned from facilitating over 100 remote collaborative workshops. This is where your participants have a chance to get creative, so this is often one of the most enjoyable aspects of a design thinking workshop. Together, the Facilitator and Producer balance keeping the audience engaged with moving the program forward and making connections from one virtual workshop session to the next. Ideation tools such as those above, and ideation games and methods are great for helping a team be effective in this stage of the design thinking process. The team also rewrote the leader’s guide for the virtual design thinking experience to accommodate both the Facilitator and Producer roles. MURAL enables innovative teams to think and collaborate visually to solve important problems. An introduction to the workshop and what it will entail, including a brief introduction to design thinking. If you’re familiar with the concept of design thinking, you’ll know that it’s all about solving complex problems in a highly user-centric way. Far from it, in fact. Given that you’re holding your workshop remotely, you’ll want to stick with between six and eight participants. In order to spread awareness about the Subject of 'Design thinking and Brainstorming'; a Virtual Workshop is being organized by Pappal Suneja on 11th & 12th September 2020, Friday & Saturday. Nothing could be skipped. But there was a high demand for the in-person experience, and we were receiving great feedback on it. We needn’t have worried. Ideation tools such as those above, and ideation games and methods are great for helping a team be effective in this stage of the design thinking process. With built-in tools, tips and guidance, Sprintbase unlocks the creative potential of your people to find more innovative solutions - informed by what your customers really care about. For the pre-workshop assignment, you’ll ask your participants to gather as many insights as possible about their target users. We knew that we couldn’t keep the workshop in its current two-to-three-consecutive-day format; we needed to break it down into smaller sessions. As a virtual company, it had always been in our longer-term game plan to transform the CoDesign workshop into a virtual experience. Which brings us on to phase two…. As you can see, this part of the workshop is really interactive and hands-on. Duration of the Virtual Design Thinking Workshop The total duration of the Virtual Design Thinking workshop is 2 consecutive days. Will people show up and be as engaged in the process as we are used to seeing? We needed to take action—and fast. If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, help is at hand. The CoDesign workshop brings L&D professionals, stakeholders, SMEs, and—most importantly—learners together through a creative and engaging experience as they work through the 5 stages of design thinking: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. This can happen more frequently during virtual meetings and workshops than it would in person, so creating activities that promote inclusivity and participation is key to engaging your team. Turns out, the answer was yes. What about virtual design thinking? Your participants can put all the insights they’ve gathered about their users into the relevant quadrants, ready to present at the workshop. Design Thinking is designed to be a quick, iterative process. To kick off your remote workshop, you want to put everybody at ease. However, when conducting a remote design thinking workshop, you’ll need to adapt this stage slightly and set it as an independent post-workshop activity. As you can imagine, the results are often hilarious—and, most importantly, a good laugh helps to break any tension and put your participants at ease. For our elementary school example, our workshop objective would be to come up with an effective solution for delivering lessons online. Design Thinking encourages out of the box thinking so be sure to encourage this too! What is the context surrounding the chosen challenge? The SweetRush team has collaborated on almost the same number of virtual CoDesign experiences as on-sites, in less than a third of the time frame. And, by this point, your participants are probably ready for a break, so consider taking fifteen minutes out before getting started on the next activity. The course introduces designers and non-designers to the fundamentals of design thinking Rather than imparting theory-based knowledge, we follow a hands-on approach to creative problem solving. Just because your team is scattered all over the globe or you’ve got people working from home, it doesn’t mean you have to put those all-important business challenges on hold. Like now? We also use this access to retrieve the following information: You can revoke this access at any time through your LinkedIn account. And the experience got even better. Note: Due to unavoidable circumstances, the dates of the event are shifted by one week.Instead of 4th and 5th September, the Workshop shall take place on 11th and 12th September 2020. Together with your invite and an outline of what participants can expect from the workshop, it’s a good idea to include some information about design thinking. Let their challenges, audiences, and solutions spark your creativity as you take your next step. What do they hope to get out of the workshop? In order to quickly adapt and improve your virtual Design Thinking workshops to the specific needs of different groups of participants, it is important to get their first-hand feedback while they still have the experience fresh in mind. With your participants at ease, you also want to motivate them to give the workshop their all. This step is especially important when it comes to running a remote design thinking workshop. If this sounds like a challenge you are getting ready to face, read on as we share our lessons learned and help you take your virtual workshop design to the next level. Our virtual CoDesign brings added benefits—greater engagement in the activities, more breathing room in the process, and a more functional prototype—which helps set up the next stages of the project for success. While the schedule was intense—facilitators often worked during breaks and between sessions to document and pull findings through to the next session—there was no doubt that working through all 5 stages in succession as a cohort was the way to go. In view of this unique situation, it would be irresponsible for them to base their actions solely on their given knowledge and experience. A few golden rules to bear in mind when crafting a POV statement: It should be human-centered, broad enough to leave room for creative solutions, but also narrow enough to ensure that it has a specific focus and is geared towards action. I then like to move into an individual brainstorming session where everybody comes up with some ideas on their own before presenting them to the group. The below videos show examples of design thinking workshop activities done live online with a group collaborating in real-time. We’ve teamed up with design thinking expert and workshop aficionado Brittni Bowering to bring you a foolproof step-by-step guide on how to run your own remote design thinking workshop. Let’s take a look. Invitee Information. In addition to writing for the CareerFoundry blog, Emily has been a regular contributor to several industry-leading design publications, including the InVision blog, UX Planet, and Adobe XD Ideas. Design Thinking is a proven innovation process that embraces empathy, inspires creativity, and encourages experimentation to solve problems and develop new ideas. 5 Benefits of running a remote design thinking workshop. Design thinking exercises are the bread and butter of successful design thinking workshops, both in-person and virtually. www.ibm.com. Learn more about how we use LinkedIn. On another level, Design Thinking projects often take place not only at the expense of the departments involved but also at the expense of our environment. For those who aren’t yet familiar with the concept, this will help to put them at ease and get a better idea of what the workshop will entail. As we’re focusing on remote design thinking, you might be wondering what kinds of problems you can realistically address through your webcams and microphones. Let’s find out why, through 5 lessons learned that you can use to level up your own virtual workshops. Would people be able to commit to attending each and every session, and would they stay engaged if there were gaps in between? Are they clear on the next part of the process? The main purpose of a remote design thinking workshop is to get a diverse group of people together to tackle a single problem. For this part of your remote design thinking workshop, Brittni recommends a two-pronged approach: First, you’ll synthesize all the data collected in the “empathy” phase and work together as a group to come up with a statement that clearly defines the user’s point of view. So, the first step in the planning process is to determine the challenge you’ll be working on. The result: our client ends up with a more functional prototype that then speeds up production. It will also highlight emerging opportunities that will help establish new value propositions going forward. Run multiple brainstorms: One luxury of running design thinking projects with remote teams is that you’ll often have more time than in a physical workshop. The shift to virtual gave the team the freedom to explore alternative scheduling plans. The pandemic shifted those priorities and accelerated the game plan. Learn more: How to define a problem statement. This is not a new course, it is being offered for the 10th year, but in an online version due to Covid constraints. In order to help professional services respond to these questions, we would not only like to point towards Design Thinking as a well-suited approach for challenges with high degrees of uncertainty – but directly provide you with practical tips for running such workshops using virtual formats and … Virtual Workshops WHAT’S ON . For the second part of the pre-work, ask your participants to create a simple empathy map. Here are some of the lessons learned. As your workshop draws to a close, you’ll round things off with a quick debrief. Another notable benefit of running a remote workshop is that you can bypass some of those tricky on-site logistics, such as finding the right space for your workshop or coordinating it so that everybody’s in the same place at the same time. However, as Brittni points out, you will need to think carefully about how you’ll gather user insights in a remote scenario. In this section, we’ll show you how to devise an effective workshop agenda. Take fifteen minutes to explain the post-workshop task and reiterate why it’s so important. A guide to the most important ideation techniques, The importance of user testing in design thinking, 5 game-changing examples of design thinking (and what we can learn from them), What is human-centered design? The conventional wisdom of design thinking says that we need to all be in the room together. Keep teams organized, engaged and on track using intuitive workspaces created specifically for remote design workshops and projects. To help bring our plan to life, let’s imagine we’re running a design thinking workshop for teachers at an elementary school. So what exactly are the benefits of a (remote) design thinking workshop? Personal introductions: Encourage each participant to introduce themselves and briefly explain their role. In the wake of prototyping and testing, you’ll want to schedule a follow-up session to discuss the results. This is also a good moment to invite your participants to reflect on the workshop and share any thoughts or questions they might have. You get this unique, multi-perspective problem-solving framework that casts a wider net—allowing solutions to come from often surprising places!”. Your participants have dedicated a lot of time to your design thinking workshop, so it’s crucial to let them know exactly how their input will be utilized. Digital collaboration tools and methodologies can drive a more efficient and effective process. Then I like to share a success story—a project I’ve been involved in that has gotten great results. In an in-person workshop, you’d go through the “building empathy” phase together; however, for a remote workshop, you’ll need to set this as an assignment for participants to complete in advance. What will the end result be? On another level, Design Thinking projects often take place not only at the expense of the departments involved but also at the expense of our environment. If you’re an external facilitator, this is also your chance to gather anonymous feedback, so be sure to include a survey link! Finally, they examined the team itself and what support it would need with the virtual facilitation. Virtual Design Thinking workshops and innovation might seem like the last thing there’s currently time to think about and money to invest into. As the workplaces and offices we visited on a daily basis shut down, so did the possibility of assembling in-person groups to perform the activities that make up a Design Thinking workshop or a Design Thinking-led project. When it comes to design thinking and imagining how it might be used and applied, it’s important to think beyond the realms of “design” and “digital”. With the rise of remote work, we’ve all been presented with new challenges. 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