lanehalley

What’s a design studio workshop?

A design studio workshop is a creative exercise that helps a group of people explore concepts and build shared understanding of a problem. Working from a shared context, individual team members sketch solutions to a problem, discuss them as a group, and then iterate concepts to improve them. The outcome of a design studio is a deeper understanding of a problem space, and a starting point for deeper discussion about the elements of the right solution.

The objective of a design studio is to explore the problem space and generate ideas. We may not necessarily produce a complete solution in one meeting. Feel free to explore crazy ideas and have fun!

Mature drawing skills are not required to participate! All that’s required is a willingness to participate.

How does it work?

This session 90 minutes, remind the participants to please arrive promptly so we can get started together. 

Introductions (5 minutes)

Review timing for workshop
Arrange group into teams
Set context by reviewing persona and scenarios
(note: you need to create the context prior to this meeting, best if the team already knows this material)

Individual Drawing (20 min)

Each person creates rough storyboards that illustrate the scenarios.
Feel free to use paper, pens, stickies, tape and scissors. Get creative!

Presentation in groups (15 min)

Within your group, each person explains their solution to the group.
During this time, the other people can take notes, but there’s no conversation/comments/questions
The group is responsible to get through all concepts in the allotted time.

Discussion in groups, record feedback (15 min)

Each team discusses all the concepts one at a time.
Comments are in the form “This part is working because…” or “I don’t see how Sandy would accomplish this….”
Record comments on each individual sketch (stickies are helpful for this)
The group is responsible to get through all concepts in the allotted time.

Converge, redraw new concept as group (20 min)

Elect a person to draw the group concept
Each team collaborates to produce a concept sketch that represents the best direction produced by their group.Note: sometimes this new concept may include elements from several concept sketches, other times the group converges around one concept.

Presentation ( 15  min)

The last 15 minutes, each group presents their converged sketch to the other group.
During this phase, capture any issues or comments about unsolved issues, areas for further exploration/research, et

Congratulations! You’ve now completed a design studio workshop!