- Facilitating UX workshops can be challenging.
Particularly when they're done remotely.
We asked UX practitioners what their tips were
for running remote workshops.
- People won't interact.
Like if you were to hand them
a post-it note and a pen in a room
and everybody gets up and goes to the wall
it's obvious who's sitting down.
So, you know, everyone would be encouraged to participate
but on a digital setting
I don't know how I'm going to get everybody to participate.
You know, it's so easy just to sit and watch
and not get engaged.
You know, I worry that the quiet voices
aren't gonna be heard.
So, that's why I think kind of icebreaker activities
or forcing giving people their own little space to work
breaking them out into groups
it takes time and it's a lot to coordinate
but I think if you get people to open up, that'll help.
And then the more we do it
I'm hoping the easier it's going to be.
- The issue with the mental draining aspect
of staring at a screen all the time.
Every time I did a real-life workshop
you could like do nine or 10 hours even if you run over
and in the end you were sort of, okay.
But now when I do a three-and-a-half hours workshop
afterwards I feel like I need to lie down
because I'm so drained.
It's just, maybe it's something about focusing
on this plane that has a screen, for too long.
I donno what exactly it is
but it's so much more exhausting than being in a room
and looking at different people and moving around more.
So, I try to account for that
with an extra load of energizers and more breaks.
But yeah, it's still difficult.
- When we are remote
we always think that we can do like multitasking
and that's not possible.
So, it's really hard when you are
trying to do something remotely
and something that you could do
it's like ask for, turn on the camera
so, you will see when someone it's like not really focused
and also like, it's pretty obvious
when someone is not paying attention
because they are like typing
or they are moving their face
in a way that they are thinking something else.
So, I think that's the main challenge that I have.
- People need to jump from breakout room
and back into the main room.
There's a lot of like making sure
that people are still doing what they need to do
which is really easy to do
when can just walk around the room
and kinda just check in on people
and so that kind of creates a lot of lagging time.
So, really is to, you have to allocate more time
to really have those workshops happen in a remote setting
which is I think the biggest learning
that I have so far now
that a lot of those collaboration now goes remote.
- It was just because probably it was problem
with the shareholders
because they were, there that kind of target
a little bit antiquated, especially in my company.
So, for them it was very difficult
to imagine things on the spot.
Even was difficult for some of them
just for like perceptional reasons
visual reasons to use a whiteboard virtually.
I try to use different apps and web services
which was also difficult for them.
So, that part was kinda not that easily big
and that thing suppose the result of this was
much more work from the designers or prototypers
because they needed to, yeah
to make much more changes and to produce much more
in order to be, like more I don't know how to say
it's more easier for the shareholders to understand.