Background
What was the driving force behind this workshop?
I have always been a firm believer that occasional workshops are an important part of a well-functioning team. They help to expand and refine people's views of the goal you are all working towards, create magnificent portals for product development and are generally fun. They are also an amazing way to give voice to the team members who otherwise might hesitate to speak up (or are just never asked).
As our team grew I noticed that it became harder to include my colleagues in the overall development of the product, even though everyone is highly encouraged to make their voices heard. It seemed more and more that my team members were working on their own tasks, and were amazing at it, but sometimes felt a bit lost about the overall direction of our overall work.
As an interaction designer I have created and led a number of collaborative workshops, both internal and external. Noticing those changes in my team, I convinced my managers to occasionally hold creative team workshops to grow all of our understanding of the work we do and share knowledge across different departments.
This project here is an example of one of my workshop frameworks with the illustrations I made to spice up the task.
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
The Good
What is the object/feature meant for truly - what is its purpose and what does it exceed at?
The Bad
Even though one might think the object/feature would be meant or altered for something like this due to its shape/personality/build, what is it really not good for?
The Ugly
How could the object/feature be improved so it would be “prettier”? Find alternative uses and ways of improvement (especially keeping the target persona in mind).
Framework
People: The workshop participants were divided into three teams with as diverse setup as possible (across different departments).
Overall task: The participants were given a user persona card, an object/feature card and a worksheet they had to fill out using the abovementioned framework: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly.
Tools: Printed cards, worksheets, markers and a lot of stickers!
Action: Teams worked separately at first, then presented their worksheets to the rest of the participants.
Extra stuff: Snacks and beers.
The teams first worked alone to ensure no one would feel overwhelmed and would have their ideas heard.
An example using LinkedIn as the "feature" with a user card of a junior front-end developer looking for their first job after graduation.
This is a worksheet for the object "toothbrush" and a user persona: Pirate Queen Mary Deathstroke
Round 1 - Everyday Objects
To kick things off the first round was just to have fun. The object cards were about some physical objects I had brought to the office, that the workshop participants had to analyze (example: duct tape). This helped to get everyone in the mood and make sure that everyone actually understood the tasks later when moving on to our product features.
As expected, the first round caused a lot of excitement and people started to relax. The teams were starting to form their own ways of working and presenting their findings - some used more theatrical methods, the others preferred to stick to the worksheet. It was also worth noting how the democracy developed inside the groups - who presents, in what order, how and also which category. As expected, the Bad category was considered the most negative of the three.
It was notable, though, that everyone was given a voice and a fair chance without me needing to intervene (unfortunately something that is not always given).
User card: Potato farmer William O'donnell. (Will O'Donnell loves working on his potato farm, just like his father & grandfather before him. And just like his 10 sons will do in the future.)
Object card: A fork. (A regular fork for eating food.)
Round 2 & 3 - Product features
The second and the third round revolved around the actual product and its features. Instead of objects, the participants were now handed feature cards with new user personas, set more to match our target audience (based on interviews and other types of user analysis).
Suddenly the same framework had to be used for existing features and this was when the diverse teams started to really pay off. A member of the sales team had a completely different experience regarding our product features than someone who spends most of his/her time doing the front-end work.
Due to the groups already getting to practice the framework in the previous round, it was clear what was expected. When presenting, it was refreshing to see that the findings and suggestions were coming from a place of expertise.
The results are being performed for the rest of the groups.
User card: Mark Bloomberg. (Mark studied English Literature in Oxford and makes his living (almost) from writing fancy stories on his online platform for the world to enjoy. A little known fact though - the Oxford University turned out to be an online clown school in Idaho. Hence, some more quality control is now needed before Mark can start his new life as a literary genius.)
Feature card: Spellcheck & Readability (QA). (Monsido spellcheck tool assures you will feel embarrassed in front of your high school English teacher.)
Results
As expected, people had a lot of opinions on their own, based on their background and experience with the product. It was fascinating to see the reasoning for the findings in different categories, especially the last one - The Ugly, which focused on feature improvements. While the presentations involved participants from all backgrounds, the individual notes were explained by their creators themselves. In the end, we all learned valuable feedback about, for example, sales calls about a certain feature that has sparked the interest of our (potential) customers.
It was also quite interesting to see how people's minds worked very much the same. I (and the product owner present) was delighted to hear that a lot of ideas presented were already things discussed in product development meetings. This felt like a big thumbs up to our ideas and gave us reassurance that we were moving the correct way.
The feedback received from the participants was also overwhelmingly positive, with requests for similar workshops to be held more often. The main praise was that this kind of workshop worked as a good disruptor for the overall workflow and helped people to view the product they were working on in a new light. A lot of feedback also emphasized that the workshop was generally just really fun - something I tried to put a lot of focus on.
In addition, the workshop produced a lot of insights about our current product features, that I will not be listing here.
