Five ways to make your online workshop more engaging and playful.

In the era of remote collaboration, the challenge lies in sharing relevant knowledge and creating a great experience. At Stupid Studio, we've infused our online workshops with playfulness and build-in engagement. This article unveils some of our strategies that extend beyond the screen, turning virtual interactions into dynamic, memorable experiences.

1. Send out Workshop Kits

When facilitating sessions online, we often send physical workshop kits before the workshop to be used throughout the day. This activates the participants during the session and makes them curious and intrigued in the days leading up to it.

The packages typically contain playful instruction letters, creative material, clues, games, and – if lucky – a few snacks. Then, we strive to make our packages visually pleasing and exciting to the touch!

2. Use the Physical Space

In online workshops, we use the participants' physical space as much as possible by giving them activities and challenges at home or in their offices.

These could be collaborative and bodily energisers done on camera. Hence, everyone sees each other while doing them, or sometimes they use objects found in their surroundings to either introduce themselves or crack a creative challenge.

3. Build-in Sensory Experiences

We strive to make our online workshops into sensory experiences by using storytelling, soundscapes and surprising visuals wherever possible.?

Some of our activities require that the participants have their eyes closed to be transported into another space than the one they're physically in. Or we can have them use objects found at home to smell, touch, or taste before they somehow have to incorporate these senses into their work. This helps open up their brainpower, create stories, and engage in collaborative thinking in new ways!

4. Create a Safe Play Space

Brainstorming, discussing, designing and making decisions can be very hard when working in teams online. Therefore, creating a safe space, trust, and a sense of teamwork in the groups is essential before the work begins.??

To do so, we introduce play activities in our online workshops throughout the process: When participants get to know each other, develop and present ideas.

As facilitators, we always show the way. We tell participants that it’s okay to have fun – and thereby lead the way for others to have fun and let go of any fear, stress and uncertainties. In our experience, you can come a long way by using lo-fi tangibility and rapid prototyping, creating a space for humour and roleplaying, spicing up the day with rewards and quizzes, and wrapping the full workshop day in a story concept.

5. Make the Digital Space Immersive

Like many other creative teams, we use Miro for our online workshops. However, whenever we have the time, we love to make this virtual brainstorming space as immersive and visually engaging for our participants as possible! We don't just work with digital post-its but strive to create a flow that's easy to navigate while feeling new and unexpected.

To do so, we make the structure for our online workshops in ways that are very similar to how we do physical experiences. Here, we activate and engage people on the board following an “intro-experience-outro-outcome” setup that aims to surprise and delight the participants.

Try one or two next time you run an online workshop, and let us know how it goes!