How to plan and run the perfect UX workshop

Dec 11, 2014  | Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Want to get some ideas to for a particular design challenge? Run a workshop. Want to evaluate designs with stakeholders? Run a workshop. Want to gather insights from domain experts? Run a workshop. Want to prioritise a set of features? Run a workshop. Want to… OK, you get the idea!

Workshops are a really key part of the UX process but all too often they are poorly thought out and poorly run. Here are my tips for planning and running the perfect UX workshop.

Planning the workshop

As a former (well Sea Scout to be more precise), I like to think that former Scouts make for very good UX professionals because we always try to, “Be prepared” (which if you didn’t know is the Scout motto). Running a good workshop is all in the planning and preparation. As a rule of thumb you should spend around twice as long preparing for a workshop as the workshop will actually take. Therefore if you think you’ll need a 2 hour workshop you should be spending at least 4 hours preparing for it. Here are some of the things you should be thinking about.

Establishing the goals of the workshop

First and foremost think about the goals of the workshop. Why are you having the workshop in the first place? What do you need to get out of it? It can often be a good idea to start with the desired workshop outputs and work backwards from there. For example, if your desired output is a prioritised set of features, then how can you best arrive at these?

Planning activities

Having established your workshop goals you’ll want to plan out what you’re actually going to do during the workshop. Think about not just what you need to get out of the workshop but also what is likely to work well?

can be a great way to engage people and to help stimulate dialogue and conversation. If you need inspiration the and websites both have lots of ideas for potential workshop activities. If you’ve not tried an activity out before it can be a good idea to carry out a quick pilot to get an idea of timings and to see it the activity is likely to work well for your workshop.

Deciding who needs to come

There is often a tendency to invite everyone and their dog to a workshop, but really you should only invite people that absolutely need to be there, and that will actually have something to contribute. It’s generally best to keep workshop numbers as small as possible ( talks about the sort of group size that you would have for a dinner party) so it can sometimes be a good idea to run multiple workshops with smaller groups. This ensures that the group isn’t too large and unwieldy. Also, if someone doesn’t need to attend the entire workshop don’t be afraid to invite them to only part of it.

It’s worth thinking about whether anyone will need to dial in to the workshop. Having participants join via conference call or video phone completely changes the dynamics of a workshop, so it can often be a good idea to run a separate remote workshop, along with any face-to-face workshops. This way you can optimise the workshop to participants dialling in, or taking part in person.

Facilitating the workshop

The workshop filling should consist of your various workshop activities. This is where good facilitation is key. As I’ve already mentioned I’ve generally found it best to have a designated facilitator for each activity and then one or more note takers / assistants. Running a workshop and taking good notes is only really feasible for very experienced facilitators and relatively small groups, so try to get some help running the workshop if you can.

Introduce each activity before it’s undertaken and make it clear to everyone what is expected of them. It’s a good idea to use examples to help give people an idea of what they need to do and don’t be afraid to stop or change an activity if it’s not working. Finally, try to keep a close eye on time. It can be all too easy to lose track of how much time is remaining and find that you’re not going to be able to cover everything that you wanted to.

Closing the workshop

All good things come to an end and like a good book or film (apart from those rubbish two parters – damn you Peter Jackson) you should bring your workshop to a well-rounded conclusion. It’s a good idea to spend some time at the end of the workshop going through what has been achieved, looking at next steps, assigning actions and generally ensuring that any loose ends will closed off.

Like a good host you should thank everyone for coming and remind them how awesome they’ve been (even if they haven’t). Finally remind everyone of any follow up workshops and activities (think homework at the end of a school lesson!).

Recording outputs

No doubt you’ll create lots of outputs from your workshop. These could be in the form of post-it notes, sketches, scribbles, ideas, lists and so on. You’ll want to keep a record of these outputs so make sure that you not only photograph everything, but also that you take as much away with you as possible. This is why it’s generally better to use flip charts rather than white boards (as you can take the pages away) and to stick post-it notes on paper, rather than directly on a wall or window.

After the workshop

Remember when as a child you had to write thank you cards and letters for birthday presents? (I suspect it’s all via email and Facebook nowadays). A little thank you goes a long way so after the workshop be sure to thank all the participants once again and reiterate any follow up actions and activities. Share any workshop outputs so that everyone continues to feel involved and can feed in if necessary. Finally ask for any general feedback about how the workshop was run and spend some time reflecting yourself (think of it as a ) so that you can make the next UX workshop you run even more perfect!

Also see