Tips for running an inclusive, hybrid workshop

This is a modified script of the talk I delivered at UX Scotland in June 2023

Let's talk about workshops!

I'm sure we've all either attended or facilitated one, and for the most part, we've been doing a good job - as both participants and facilitators. But, the world is different now.

In the past, we were accustomed to running in-person workshops, gathering colorful post-it notes and sharpies, and making sure we had clean whiteboards. As designers, we always knew how to peel a sticky note without losing its stickiness.We've conducted countless workshops where everyone spent hours in a visually appealing room and obtained actionable insights by the end of it. Typically, someone would volunteer to take photos of all the walls filled with post-it notes and whiteboards using their phones. Or iPads, if you're weird!

It was difficult facilitating these workshops, but we got used to these. Facilitating workshops is a job and like any job, we have experts running these workshops. And for most parts, it worked. We learned how to collaborate and include everyone to get the best out of our workshop participants. Or, so we think..

You know who it didn’t work for? People with dyslexia. People who find it difficult to read or write as quickly as the others. And it sucked. Let’s also not forget how difficult it was to understand some peoples handwritings. People took pictures, but who really paid attention to all the content that was captured?

Pandemic

When the pandemic started, we had to rely on online tools for workshops. However, these tools had a steep learning curve, and some of us are still struggling to grasp their complexities. Despite this, they have helped increase inclusivity in some ways. For example, they provide everyone with the same playground, without being limited by the constraints of physical space. This usually means having an infinite virtual canvas that allows everyone to see what each person has contributed, thus creating a more transparent environment where everyone feels heard. It also removes the barrier of documenting these workshops. Everyone can access the same digital whiteboard whenever they want. This is great because there are no scribbles, no hard-to-understand handwriting, and it generally provides a better understanding of the flow of the workshop.

While virtual whiteboarding tools are more inclusive than some other options, they are not the most accessible tools available. Users with vision impairments or motor-skill difficulties may still struggle to use these tools. Additionally, when joining a board with an abundance of information, there can be a sense of information overload. For neurodivergent individuals, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and lost in such situations.

The only way a facilitator can combat these issues is by designing workshops that are inclusive to all. That's why I'm here to talk to you about how you can be an awesome facilitator.

Case Study

As a development team, we would have spent time doing research and coming up with insights that we need to convert into designs and actions. These co-creation workshops involved activities like preliminary blue-sky open-ended exploratory sketches, brainstorming activities like crazy 8’s and then spending some time sketching concrete ideas followed by a show and tell. I thought everyone contributed and we got a great set of ideas towards the end.

When I asked for feedback at the end of the workshop, one participant mentioned that they found the exercise quite difficult. When everyone else was busy sketching interfaces that solved problems that our users were facing, this participant was struggling to keep up with everyone. As a facilitator, I did not know it at the time. As a designer, it felt a bit strange to me. I have always worked with other designers and creative people who love brainstorming and are good at putting down random ideas on paper. Everyone loved working on broad problems with open-ended solutions. This was the first time I’ve heard someone say that they struggle with brainstorming.

Looking back, it was quite insensitive of me to assume that everyone feels comfortable in the same environments as I do. And since that incident, I’m constantly striving to make sure that I cater to everyone’s requirements in any workshops I run.

Which, don’t get me wrong, is hard to do. It can never be perfect, because as a facilitator, you are constantly dealing with a diverse group of participants. You will never be able to design the perfect workshop for everyone. But you can still be better.

Patterns

Let’s think about some behaviours that are common to all of us. Us humans, we are pattern-seekers. Look at clouds and you’ll start to see shapes that you’re familiar with. Is that a bunny? Is that a unicorn? Is that a dinosaur? No. It’s just a bunch of water-drops floating together. Some of us are good at finding these patterns, while some of us struggle. But all of us try to find a pattern to things to give it some meaning. We need explanation for things that are happening, and patterns help us with that.

And we’re great at that! It makes us efficient. Knowing how things have worked in the past, help us understand how things are currently happening and will most-likely happen in the future. Our patterns dictate our behaviours.

But they are also restrictive. Patterns limit creativity in some-way. And to bring it back into the context of running workshops, you want your workshops to follow patterns but let your participants be creative in those patterns. Have familiarity in your workshops. Loads of people have spent countless hours perfecting workshops and frameworks. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel, just let the participants explore within those patterns.

Collaboration & Learning

Workshops are also all about collaboration and learning. You spend time with a group of people working towards solving a common problem. Whatever you do, you have to do as a group. And of course, there are voices which are louder and will take control, and there are voices which are quieter and need some encouragement.

As a facilitator, your job becomes to bring about that balance to get the best out of everyone. Being conscious that you’re the person designing a framework that’s going to direct this group of people in the right direction gives you a lot of power and a lot of responsibility.

Synchronous collaboration

Does this collaboration always need you to be working together at the same time? Let’s think about it. Again, let’s take the example of a co-creation workshop. Your workshop goal is to come up with a wireframe after conducting some research. Fairly straightforward, right?

You do a replay of all the insights you’ve discovered in your research, highlight some key insights and then start brainstorming ideas as a group. Once everyone has brainstormed ideas, and again this could be on a virtual whiteboard together or on sheets of papers. Once you’ve done that, you might want to split up and work individually to refine those ideas. And then, at the end of the workshop everyone can tell what they’ve worked on and we can combine the best ideas. Sounds good, right? All done together, in two hours or so, maybe?

An alternative approach

We’ve already got the insights. You as the facilitator share it with your participants ahead of time. Give them a day or two to process it, and ask them to think and note down any ideas they might come up with before the workshop.

This gives participants time to process the information, think about it and come up with ideas in their own time. The point of the workshop then just becomes collaboration and knowledge sharing. You can go a step further and breakdown the second part of the worskshop into an asynchronous step too!

I think that there is a lot of value in doing some sort of brainstorming together. In our example, I would want to do something like a Crazy 8’s together. But, we’re giving the participants all the information they need beforehand. When they come to the workshop, they already have some ideas about what they want to do. Doing something like crazy 8’s is just giving them time to refine those ideas they have. After that, we could probably do a show and tell about the best ideas they’ve come up with. Remember that they’ve already spent time understanding the insights and the crazy 8’s have made them become more concise with their thoughts.

When they speak, or write down their best ideas, they’ve already been refined twice. At this point, other participants can write down what they’ve liked or disliked about everyones ideas. This critique is really helpful to understand constraints and possibilities that exist for the problem we’re trying to solve. So we now have all these ideas and the pros and cons for each of those ideas.

At this point, there is no reason to sketch more thought-out ideas together. It’s a good idea to leave the sketching to be done asynchronously. Give people a couple of days to sketch ideas and put it on a virtual whiteboard.

After a couple of days, bring everyone together to discuss what they’ve sketched and why they’ve sketched it out. Leaving the sketching bit out of the syncronous workshop will give people time to refine and have more thought-out ideas. Disucssing these thought-out sketches a couple of days later will give people a fresher perspective and the feedback on these ideas will be a lot more actionable.

By following this pattern, you are still collaborating for the problem, while having a more relaxed thinking and creation time. You are making everyone feel comfortable by giving them time, and collaborating and asking for their thoughts intentionally when together. Only doing intentional collaboration for when it is required. It’s great.

What about those who still struggle with sketching? If you noticed, I constantly used the word "ideas". During my workshops, I make it a point to emphasize that all I care about are your ideas. When we do crazy 8's, I want the participants to iterate on their ideas, not their drawings. If they are comfortable sketching interfaces, go ahead and do that. If they are comfortable iterating words, then do that instead. Their outputs don't matter, the outcomes do. As a facilitator, making everyone comfortable and included makes a huge difference and the language you use and the words you choose, makes up a huge part of that!

Some useful tips

1. Know your environment

The first thing to consider is knowing where you’re hosting the workshop. Is it in-person? Is it on a virtual whiteboard? Are we doing it synchronously? Are we doing it asynchronously? Is it hybrid? For me, the preference is always running a synchronous or hybrid workshop and use a virtual whiteboard for everything.

Remember, even if one of your participants is working remotely, you need to design it in a way that everything needs to be remote. Planning workshops on a virtual board always gives you the flexibility to make it remote for all. The worst that would happen if everyone is in-person would be on a laptop in the same room. There is a lot of value in capturing information on a digital whiteboard than on pictures on someones phone. If your audience struggles with these online tools, ensure you’re catering for them by either having them contribute in an alternate way or by designing your workshop in a way that suits them.

2. Know your audience

Once you know what type of workshop you are doing and where you are running it, you can start thinking about who your audience is going to be.

In my opinion, this is the most crucial part when it comes to making your workshops inclusive. You can always improve your future workshop experiences by asking for feedback at the end of every session. Knowing and understanding your audience and constantly striving to be better will be noticeable and even those people who aren’t speaking up immediately, will start to feel more encouraged to speak up and feel included.

If you’re working with a different group of people every time, you can still standardise some aspects of your facilitation to be more inclusive. First of all, understand how comfortable your participants are in your chosen environments. If it is a non-digital environment, ensure that everyone has the right stationary and if they are comfortable using it all. If it is a virtual environment, understand how digitally literate your participants are. Even if they are comfortable using these virtual devices, they might not be familiar with the tools you’re using. Spare 4-5 minutes to give an overview of the tools you are planning to use. At this point, it is also worth doing an accessibility check. Perhaps you might want to turn on subtitles, or even provide the courtesy for participants to leave their cameras off if your workshop activities don’t necessarily require them to leave it on.

3. Know your tools

As a facilitator, you have to spend some time understanding the tools you are going to use. Not only because it makes things run smoother, but also because you should be explaining the basics to your participants. There are also certain nuances that really help with structuring and the flow of the workshop.

One thing I've seen people do quite a lot, is sharing a link to a whiteboard and then still sharing their screens of the same whiteboard. What they could be doing instead is just ask people to follow them on the whiteboard. For people with smaller screens, it’s just taking up two windows. For people with poor connections, you’re just adding unnecessary stress. Being efficient only comes from understanding how your tools are designed.

These specialised tools do their research. They can cover 99% of the flows you’re trying to implement. Things like timers, doing things in private mode, voting, showing results, asking people to follow your cursor, and so on… are all basic functionalities in these tools. As a facilitator, please explore these in the whiteboarding tool of your choice.

4. Manage the energy

As a facilitator, you are also in control of the energy of the workshop. There are signs to show that your audience isn’t engaged. People going on their phones, people doodling, or people just not participating in conversations. Always keep an eye out for these things. It’s also possible that there is too much energy in some participants who are then biasing conversations and decisions by just talking more than the others. It’s always a good idea to let everyone speak and give everyone equal opportunities to contribute. Virtual workshops are great because no matter how much or how little you talk, you are still given the same virtual real-estate. I’ve found that this really encourages people to put down their thoughts on the board, even if they aren’t the most chatty.

Another thing I often get people asking me is if they can use templates for workshops. And my suggestion is always to take them and modify them for your workshop. These virtual whiteboards have great communities who have designed every workshop imaginable and even added themes to it. But, please take your time to study the template. Understand the intentions behind each of those modules, what the outcomes are and modify it based on your audience and needs.

Try to find natural breaks in your workshops. Any workshop over an hour needs at least a 5 minute break. Anything between one to two hours needs either two 5 minute breaks or one 10 minute break. Anything over three hours needs to be split into two or more workshops. Always engage with the participants and see if they’re showing signs of stress or fatigue.

I also always encourage ice-breakers. Just a warning though, there is a possibility that some fun activities might be uncomfortable for certain people. If you’re working with an unknown group, it’s best to keep the ice-breaker activities generic.

5. Communicate effectively

Inclusivity is all about communication. As a facilitator, it is really important for you to communicate what you expect from the participants at regular intervals. Use your tools to always communicate what the participants need to be doing. Of course, say it out loud but if someone missed something, they should always know what you want them to do. Mention how long they have to do it - synchronously or asynchronously. If there is time, you might find it useful to even link resources or create a summary of what is the right way to do something.

Conclusion

I hope that these tips help you make your workshops more inclusive. The best way to improve is just to try things and gather feedback. The more workshops you do, the better you get at it. Before I started my current job, I did not expect to enjoy facilitating as much as I do now. But there is something quite rewarding to guide a group of smart individuals into solving problems more effectively.

Give it a try, I’m sure you’ll feel just as rewarded as I do.