Manage the Group
Facilitation is more than just making an agenda and keeping time. Facilitation is an active role. How you share an activity has significant influence over how participants approach it. How you interact with participants can alter their behavior in the workshop. It’s the facilitator’s responsibility to keep the design studio moving and ensure the workshop produces useful outcomes.
Allow Enough Time for the Workshop
Running out of time or rushing through activities can undermine the workshop goals and decrease participants’ confidence in the findings. You want to see a broad range of ideas in a short amount of time so that you can cheat bounded rationality (see Find a Design That Satisfices).
It might be possible to complete a rapid exploration workshop with only one or two goals in an hour or two. Such workshops are ideal for exploring a small number of narrow goals or for building consensus when the group understands the high-level solution but needs to explore details.
A design studio with many goals might need one or two full days to complete. When the problem is not well understood, plan on having many smaller sessions over the course of several weeks. Remember that not every problem can be explored collaboratively in a workshop setting.
Set Expectations from the Start
Great workshops have some degree of mystery but also let participants know up front what they’ll be doing and why you’re here. State the workshop goals up front and ensure the group is on board before starting.
Start a workshop by sharing the general workshop agenda. It’s not necessary to share every detail. Some details we’ll want to keep secret to prevent participants from getting confused or “pre-fetching” designs. For workshops running more than a few hours, share estimated start times for agenda items so participants can self-select in or out of specific activities. This way participants will be present at the workshop and deal with distractions at times that won’t disrupt the workshop.
Set ground rules at the start of the workshop. Here are some examples of ground rules:
Sample Workshop Ground Rules | |
|---|---|
Everyone participates | When time is up, we move on |
No “right” or “wrong” answers | Ask questions if you need help |
Watch the clock (I’ll help too) | Have fun (seriously) ☺ |
Introduce Activities with the Tell-Show-Tell Approach
When introducing a new activity to the group, always tell participants what they’ll do, show them an example of what it looks like, then review the instructions you just gave them. Most people will miss important details the first time they see something new. Reviewing instructions after seeing a concrete example gives participants a second chance to ask questions about the activity.
It’s best to use examples from previous workshops. When examples don’t exist, create a mock-up by staging a picture of the activity or approximating an example.
Share Tips for Activities
Inevitably when you say Go!, someone will freeze up. For many participants, this workshop could be their first time working collaboratively like this.
To help participants get started, share tips for each activity. A simple reminder or nugget of advice is an excellent way to help participants avoid blank page syndrome. Keep an eye out for groups or individuals staring at a blank page—they may need help getting started.
Set Deadlines
All activities in the architecture design studio are time boxed. Set realistic but aggressive time constraints to keep things moving. Participants should feel rushed but somehow manage to finish the activities just in time. Ideally, every activity is a buzzer beater with groups putting finishing touches on their sketches as you call Time’s up!
Educate Participants Just-in-Time
Unless you’ve collaborated with all the participants in your workshop before, set aside some time to teach people critical software architecture and design concepts just-in-time during the workshop. The goal with just-in-time education is to ensure participants have just enough information to be successful in the particular design activity you’re doing. A quick review of important architectural concepts or an introduction to quality attribute scenarios might be all that’s required.
Participation is essential to a workshop’s success. It’s why you gathered a group in the first place! Ensure participants have the knowledge they need to participate effectively.
Use Parking Lots
Design is a journey that often takes a winding road to reach a destination. During a design studio, you may happen upon interesting ideas and useful discussions that you don’t have time to explore at that exact moment. Keep a running list, a parking lot, of discussion points to be visited at the end of the workshop. Using parking lots keeps the workshop moving and assures interested parties there will be time to discuss topics that interest them.