Lead UX Instructor at University of Wisconsin UX Lead & Consultant at Swoley Moley
Collaborating on a Group Project
Design & Facilitate Collaborative Workshops with Actionable Outcomes
More and more companies are looking for Designers who can build and facilitate collaborative workshops. They need people who can bring groups of stakeholders together to work on challenges or leverage workshops to gain a better understanding of their customers’ needs. It is tough to get everyone in the same room, so when we do, we need to make the most of it. We need to be able to determine who needs to be involved and what success looks like.
Join, Robert Grossman, in a guided group project. Together you will assess a challenge that AIGA Chicago is dealing with and build a collaborative workshop to use with the community to help it move forward. We will determine what activities need to happen, why they need to happen, who the workshop will be serving, and how we are serving them through it. This includes building the needed design artifacts and determining actionable steps for participants to walk away with.
Hybrid Sessions (Remote & In-Person):
This will be a combination of remote and in-person, depending on the comfort level of the group.
Zoom & Invision Freehand (Remote)
Decide as a group on In-Person Sessions in Downtown, Chicago (In-Person)
Intermediate / Advanced Levels:
Requires a level of understanding of research methods to be able to learn what the client needs are
A good workshop is a team event
There needs to be a level of critical thinking involved to be able to work out how to bring people together to strategically share knowledge in a way that is then easily actionable or usable
Familiarity with various Design Thinking methods
Comfort using digital whiteboards
Potential Mentor Topics:
What purposes collaborative workshops fulfill
Types of challenges and activities to address them
Research
Workshop roles
Cross-pollination of knowledge
Metrics / KPIs
Actionable takeaways
Facilitation is a team sport
Workshop iteration
Potential Takeaways:
Building a workshop that can be used outside of the Mentor Program
Helping AIGA Chicago untangle a challenge
Practice building and running collaborative workshops
Robert is a design consultant, Lead Adjunct UX Instructor with the University of Wisconsin, and Design Lead for a small app development team. He has over two decades of working in design and operations and leverages that to help organizations consider how their people, processes, and technology weave together to create a better experience for the recipient, the staff, and the organization.
His strength is helping find alignment on how to move forward, from small teams to industries. He assesses capabilities and pushes for the next achievable steps, even if they are little ones and the challenge is terrifying.
As a mentor he is an ear and a resource. He listens to what people are saying, recognizes what they are feeling, then asks the questions to help empower them to solve their problems. He introduces new ideas and people. And sometimes he will simply call you on your shit.
