5 Things You Can & Should Expect at a Design Thinking Workshop

1. Expect to be surprised...

I remember one of our very first workshops. As people came into the room I heard many comments. “How do we get on WiFi?” “Where can I plug in my laptop in?” and then, “I love the music!” and “Look at these crazy materials!” It made me so happy to see that they were intrigued and that, clearly, this was not what they had expected. During a design thinking workshop you aren’t on your laptop and you don’t need WiFi. Instead, you will be deeply engaged in experiential, fast-paced, and hands-on work. 

Even more important was the surprise people expressed at the end of the day as we debriefed. “I didn’t think we could get to such deep insights in such a short time.” “I am shocked at how creative my team was.” “Empathy really matters.” “I’m surprised at how much fun this was!” Hosting design thinking workshops is such wonderful work because you are designing learning experiences that have an element of the unexpected. You are intentionally trying to disrupt expectations — not for the sake of disruption — but so that people will think differently and see their challenges and problems with fresh eyes. These are two essential skills of a design thinker. 

2. Expect learning…

You come into a workshop with the expectation that you will learn about the design thinking process. But you’ll learn a lot more than that. As you work collaboratively you will learn about others, but you will also learn about yourself. You’ll learn how comfortable you are with digging deep into people’s stories as you conduct ethnographic interviews and you’ll discover that empathy is a two-way street. You’ll learn how it feels to push your creative boundaries as you brainstorm, which might be exhilarating, frightening, or perhaps both. When you receive feedback on the prototype you’ve designed, you might feel disappointed or you might be able to see that feedback is a gift. I truly believe that real learning is a mixture of the content you process and your reaction to it. 

3. Expect ambiguity…

Design thinking is not a neat and tidy process that can be wrapped up in a one-or two-day workshop. It is essentially a culture changer, as you are building an individual’s capacity to be a more creatively confident, human-centered innovator. Right after one of the most challenging parts of the design process, crafting a User Needs Statement, we share our Design Thinking Mood-o-Meter to help you recognize and accept the sense of confusion and dissonance that often surfaces. You have been an empathetic listener, and analyzed and synthesized your data, but you haven’t built anything yet and you haven’t had the opportunity to test your prototypes with a user. This will be resolved as you move through the rest of the process, but at this point in a design thinking workshop, you can expect unsettling ambiguity.

4. Expect failure…

I remember listening to an interview at a workshop I was observing where the interviewer was asking the user what he would like to have designed for him. The interviewer then designed it and the user was happy because it was exactly what he had asked for. This, however, is NOT design thinking. Design thinking is about deriving unarticulated user needs — needs that that the user may not even be aware of. (Tip: One way to avoid this is to ask for stories about past experiences). It is not about asking your user to design the solution for you. Instead, it is your responsibility as a design thinker to have empathy as you listen to your user’s stories, challenges and frustrations and design based on the needs you have uncovered/discovered. And because you don’t know if what you have designed is going to be something that meets your user’s need, you can expect failure. 

Failure is an opportunity for reflection “Did I not ask enough about the stories I heard?” “Did I miss what was really frustrating to my user?” “Did I not make good inferences based on what my user said when I was crafting my Empathy Map?” The point of failure is to learn from it. 

5. Expect to be challenged…

 As working adults, we have knowledge and skills that allow us to succeed in what we do. Yet think about the experiences of a young elementary school student whose entire day is spent trying to understand new things. In a workshop, you will feel what that is like as you are challenged to understand the design thinking process and mindsets. It’s not easy. But it’s also not very often we get the chance to just be learners. It is really important to embrace the challenge, and for just a moment, be okay with not knowing how to do something. See this day as a gift and a joy.

As I begin a workshop, I always invite our participants to stay in the moment and learn with us, for just this one day. This is because I believe that a day filled surprise, learning, ambiguity, failure and challenge is a day worth experiencing. And I expect that at the end of the day they will agree.