Library of facilitation techniques

Design Workshop Activities

Service Design and Design Thinking activities to help your group innovate and develop new solutions and services.
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Andrea Beliczki

Rejection Therapy

Get fresh and perspective by trying something new and (slightly) scary.

Often, we're designing for behavior change. To find emotional common ground with the people you're designing for, observe how it feels to wade into the unknown, and experience how scary trying something new can be.

Andrea Beliczki

Fill in the Blank

Identify some of your user's key emotions.

Offer prompts in an interview to uncover people's emotions about things that might not come up otherwise and set yourself up for more engaging conversation.

Digital Society School

Emoji story

An Emoji story is a method to interpret collected data by translating it into a story. In the story, you leave out specific words that describe important and emotional concepts and change them for Emoji‘s.

To be used after having collected data of user behaviour, context and emotions.

Andrea Beliczki

Photo diary

Get a window in someone else's life. Gain access to the parts of someone's life you might not otherwise see by having them keep a photo diary for a few days or weeks.

Erica Marx

Standard debrief Framework

1a. What did we set out to do?
1b. Did we achieve it?
1c. If not, why not?

2. What did we do well?

3. Opportunities for change? 

4. What are we learning?

5. Ideas based on this experience

Andrea Beliczki

Dish it Out

Create a meat that mimics the experience of your product.

This one is fresh out of the oven. Put your chef hat on, and design a meal, cocktail or mocktail that represents the essence of your product or experience.

Hyper Island

Near and Dear

Have you ever been in the middle of a discussion with a group that is trying to reach a decision about something and realized that you actually don’t have much of a stake in what happens? Or, have you ever been advocating for a group to take things in a certain direction and notice that others (for whom the outcome will not be relevant) are arguing just as passionately as you are?

Many times when we are trying to make decisions as a group, involved parties care about the outcome, but at varying levels. This tool helps identify who actually has a stake in the outcome and allows a group to get perspective on which voice(s) should be a priority in the decision process.

Andrea Beliczki

Flip Your Space

Prototype space to evoke emotions and understand behaviors.

Repurpose your space in the name of design. Rearrange a room to role play how a user might experience your service or product. Try out these methods early on in prototyping.