Hello everyone! In addition to the Design Thinking User Persona 'Empathy Map' exercise, what other exercises have you used/can you recommend to define a full E2E UX journey? Context: I am running a workshop for a client within the retail/luxe sector who is undergoing a global HR Transformation and implementing new ai technologies into their current HR Talent stack. Previous workshops (4! 😯) that they have conducted miss both the 'entry point' for each user persona and lack the 'feeling/empathy/engagement' aspect. Personas are within HR, Business, Employee & Candidates Any recommendations or ideas on how to approach this are appreciated! 😁

I’m coming from a design background and am interested in running brand strategy workshops using techniques from Facilitation Fundamentails while still providing creative materials. I also am excited by the value of helping teams get unstuck with other internal blockers with facilitation workshops. Has anyone else done brand strategy this way? Is adding internal team facilitation too different? Should that be under a separate brand/ webpage? Thanks for any feedback!

I led a short workshop today to identify possible positioning statements for a university program. What I was reminded of was the importance of setting up the activity. I shared the positioning framework, how it is used in concert with crafting marketing messages, and shared a few examples. They had to guess the brands that aligned with the positioning examples, which made it more interesting than simply telling them. Examples also ensured they knew what the end point should look like. In 30 minutes we accomplished the goal of generating a number of possibilities and heard all voices. I ended with a dot vote which identified their top choices. Now we go into research mode with students to validate the internal perspective. In the past I had a tendency to move quickly into the exercise and people wouldn't engage to the same level as when I take time to set it up by showing them what the end point will look like and reinforcing the value of the activity. With clarity of the purpose and tangible examples of output, people stop questioning the point of the activity and dive in.

Hey Facilitators👋 I wanted to share this exercise with you all. I love to kick my workshops off using a very simple exercise called 'Hopes and Fears'. This exercise is used in various contexts, such as team meetings, workshops, or group discussions. It's a great way for you as a Facilitator to set and get expectations from the participants right from the beginning! This is how you run it 👇 1️⃣ All you need is a whiteboard and you as the facilitator will divide the board in two categories; Hopes and Fears. 2️⃣ Give each participant a sharpie and two blocks of sticky notes. Make sure the two blocks of stickies are different colours e.g. blue for hopes, yellow for fears. 3️⃣ Encourage participants to write all their hopes or positive expectations about a particular project, idea, or situation. One idea per sticky! Stick them in the 'hopes' section of the board. 4️⃣ Encourage participants to share one or two 'hopes' each. 5️⃣ Repeat the same process for the Fears. This exercise helps team members express their feelings, align their perspectives, and build trust by understanding everyone's viewpoints before diving into solving the challenge at hand. Try it in your workshops! It's really nice. Let me know if you have any other nice exercises or activities that you like to use to kick off your workshops 😊

👋 Hey all. I am looking for some workshop approaches, and I knew that this community would be a great place to tap into. I am a user experience researcher, and I am asked to join projects and quickly get the team aligned around a user's problem we are trying to solve. People involved in this project could hold a variety of roles (marketing, call/help center managers, data analysts). And some of these roles are not just product folks (product owner/manager, UX designer, business analyst, developer). I have been asked to come up with a go-to "tool kit" that I can use when I need to bring the team together to quickly explore the problem or solution space. So I am hoping the team has some great activities that I can start to think about when I need to hit my go-to "tool kit." Now I know what you are thinking. What problem is she trying to solve? That is a good question. I think that there could be a number of problems a workshop activity could try to address: • Understanding (and empathizing) with the user • SMEs (subject matter experts) sharing their knowledge and getting the team up to speed on the project • Exploring the problem space and thinking about which problem we want to tackle first • Exploring the brainstorming /solution space • Getting the team on the same page / team building around the project. I recently did a workshop with a co-worker and we tried out some activities from the "Design Sprint" book. We did the "How Might We" activity, and it really wasn't the best approach because we are not trying to get the team to design toward a solution. Instead we are trying to explore blue sky / big dream possibilities to take our product (technically) to the next level. Believe me, our product is behind in some aspects, and we really want to get the conservative and risk adverse team members to think more broadly and creatively. That is just one example of what workshop might work better. So please help me build out my workshop activities with sharing some workshop approaches and when best to use them.