How to run a design thinking workshop
Bart Krawczyk maps a design thinking workshop onto the same five steps as the full process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test), compressed into one session or a short series instead of the weeks or months the full process normally takes. The workshop skips new research and works from insights the team already has, since gathering fresh data doesn’t fit the timeframe.
His own departure from convention is at the ideation and prototyping ends. For ideating, he runs several short cycles rather than one long one, splitting a 30-minute block into three rounds of seven minutes of ideation and three of sharing rather than 20 and 10, on the logic that urgency and frequent sharing keep energy and cross-pollination higher than one long stretch would. For prototyping, he skips it inside the workshop entirely. Attention is already spent by that point, and the actual build is better left to the designers who’ll execute it, with feedback gathered along the way instead.
Fichamento#
- For choosing between generated solutions, he prioritizes the option that teaches the most from testing it, over frameworks like ICE or an impact matrix that rank for immediate value, arguing the extra learning compounds into every future initiative.
- His group-size range is five to eight people, stretching to twelve only for a genuinely complex problem, with at least one representative from support, marketing, product, design, sales, and tech to cover the relevant perspectives.
- For a first attempt, he recommends a three-hour session with 45 minutes on each of the first four blocks, prototyping split off as a follow-up activity rather than squeezed into the same session.
- He sets three preconditions for running a workshop at all. A reasonably clear strategic objective, an existing base of insights to work from, and a shortage of ideas rather than an existing backlog of untested ones. Without insights, he says to go gather them first rather than run a workshop on guesses.