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Learn how to run a Design Studio with distributed teams

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What‍

A Design Studio helps teams visually articulate a campaign and or product ideas will look and behave.

Remember this is a collaborative sketching exercise (not drawing!), made for cross-functional teams, which:

• Builds on a broad hypotheses
• Uncovers solutions to your hypotheses
• Identifies your first “MVP” target to test

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Why

Aligns teams around a shared understanding of the customer problem and eventually shared solutions.

How to do it

Design studio workshops consist of a four-step process lasting over 3-4 hours.

1. Ideate — Review your broad hypotheses and other reference materials such as customer journey maps.
2. Sketch Solutions — Bring ideas to life in a picture format (2 rounds)
3. Critique and Converge — Cherry pick concepts and merge them into a single creative solution.
4. Decide — Identify the riskiest solution to build and test first.

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Pre-Design Studio

• Assign a facilitator: A facilitator is the person responsible for guiding the team through each step in the workshop and answering questions about the process.
• Assign a scribe: A scribe assists the facilitator with gathering input from the team during your session and capturing/posting key notes to the board.
• Assemble a team: Put together a cross-functional team (no more than 10) comprised of diverse representatives from the key areas of your company or client's company. Make sure it has representation in and outside of design so that it enables a shared understanding AND ownership of the challenge and solution. A.K.A. Get buy-in early so you can get the investment you need.
• ‍Setup your MURAL (virtual whiteboard app) template: Start by using this template here that I created for MURAL.
• Create a slack channel: This is a place for you to share action items and have remote participants to share back their ideas.

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Pre-Design Studio Checklist for Participants

• Check your internet connection.
• Check webcam (laptop or desktop preferred) and turn off your cat filters.
• Bonus! Get a large monitor or two.
• Get Zoom: For those that don't have it yet download, install, and run the setup test.
• Get Mural: Login and setup profile, then watch "How to add content" a 2m video.
• Get a Printer (optional): Make sure you have printer paper, the white stuff, 8.5x11 is good and print this "6-Up"
• Get a black felt-tip pen.
• Block out your work calendar for 3-4 hrs.
• Turn on “Do Not Disturb” for Slack.

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Step 1. Ideation (working alone together)

Gather the building blocks for your solution sketches. Reference existing research and project materials;

• Review your Design Challenge Question.
• Review your Observations (Did these alter our assumptions of the design challenge?).
• Review your Problem Statement.
• Review your Broad Hypotheses.
• Take notes on things that stand out to you.

For the first round the team is going to share ideas in the form of words, drawings and or pictures within the Mural board.

• Words; Keywords, quotes, phrases, notes.
• Drawings; Doodles, diagram/workflow sketch, symbols.
• Pictures; Found image references such as photos or screenshots.

A. Begin Ideation (10m)

Step 2a. Sketching Solutions (Round 1 of 2)

Start with your “6-Up” 

• Ask each participant to focus on a single idea they've shared, the one they feel is the strongest.
• Remind participants to make sure they're solving for at least one customer persona or proto-persona. 
• A solution can be in the form of a storyboard/UI/workflow/messaging, but should be end “product” focused
• Keep in mind this session works best when participants sketch several variations of the same idea. Quantity over quality.

A. Begin Sketching (15m)

B. Discuss, Critique & Highlight Ideas (3m per participant)

• Each person will spend a few minutes walking everyone through their solution.
• PRESENTER: Each participant should explain how each solution helps solve your persona’s problem
• ‍This is not a pitch! The goal is not to sell concepts. But for participants to explain their thinking so the rest of the team can understand and take notes.
• ‍TEAM: Help clarify what you don’t understand by asking “How does this help solve Persona X’s problem?”

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Step 3a. Critique and converge (Round 1 of 2)

Time-box each person to 3 minutes max. The scribe will be responsible for taking notes as each person is presenting their sketches and will be responsible for adding these notes to the MURAL board as “highlights” to review before the next step.

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Take a BREAK (15m)

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A. Synthesize Feedback (The art of stealing ideas)

Take a few minutes for some reflective listening from your critiques.

• Ask participants to pick one of their six ideas to refine/expand (the one they think has the most merit) 
• Ask the the participants to focus on one idea you previously worked on, for at least one persona
• Ask the the participants to consider the specific feedback on their solution sketches
• Ask the the participants to include anything from the “Highlights” column (from all sketches) that makes sense for their sketch.

Step 3b. Sketching Solutions (Round 2 of 2)

It’s time for the participants to refine their sketched out ideas.

Instruct the team to take everything that they’ve done up to this point, and spend a total of 10 minutes sketching one solution. This sketch will be detailed and expound on ideas they've already started upon. This is not the time to introduce new ideas.

• Again, ask each of the participant to pick one of their ideas to refine/expand (the one they think has the most merit)
• Remind them they're still focusing on the same hypotheses statement from the prior sketching round.
• Sketches should be presented in a storyboard format using the 6-up template.
• Sketches should be self-explanatory!
• Words matter. Use real copy instead of squiggly lines and jibber jabber in your panels

A. Begin Sketching (15m)

Remind participants to use a blank 6-Up template and their black felt-tip pen, then ask them to start sketching their refined ideas.

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B. Gather Sketches (5m)

For the next few minutes ask participants to go around and grab screenshots of their final sketches. Ask folks post their sketch in the slack channel you setup earlier or post it directly in the mural board, next to their name in the Round 2 column.

Once all the sketches have been posted to the MURAL board feel free to take a 2 minute break.

Step 3b. Critique and converge (Round 2 of 2)

A. Discuss, Critique & Highlight Ideas (3m per participant)

• Each person will spend a few minutes walking everyone through their final sketches‍
• PRESENTER: Participants should explain how each solution helps solve your persona’s problem
• ‍This is not a pitch! The goal is not to sell your concepts. Participants should explain their thinking so the rest of the team can understand and take notes.
• ‍TEAM: Help clarify what you don’t understand by asking “How does this help solve Persona X’s problem?”
• ‍VOTE: The facilitator will using the voting tool in Mural giving each participant 2 votes. After setting up the voting session notify the team they have 2m to vote on what they think are the best solution(s). After 2m the voting will end and the facilitator will share the results.

Step 4. Decide

• Target the MVP: The solution sketch with the most votes will be the MVP your team will create in their first sprint
• ‍Plan the Design Sprint & start building and testing MVP

Click here to see examples of how we employed this method at GitHub.