What is the best deliverable from Collaborative Design Workshops?

Many Collaborative Workshops result in a common "deliverable" at the end: 9000 digital photos of Post-It Notes and semi-legible whitewall scribbles.

The best deliverable from a Collaborative Design Workshop is a clear, actionable plan or prototype that captures the team's collective insights and ideas. This deliverable should serve as a tangible representation of the workshop's outcomes, providing a roadmap for implementation and further development. It should be detailed enough to guide future actions but flexible enough to adapt as needed.

What do we even mean by "deliverable"?

Here are some common deliverables from Collaborative Design Workshops:

• Prototypes: Physical or digital models of a product or solution that demonstrate key features and functionalities. Prototypes help visualize concepts and facilitate user testing and feedback.

• Journey Maps: Visual representations of the user's experience with a product or service, highlighting pain points and opportunities for improvement. Journey maps help teams understand and improve the user experience.

• Action Plans: Detailed plans outlining the steps needed to implement the ideas and strategies generated during the workshop. Action plans include timelines, responsibilities, and key milestones.

• Personas: Fictional characters based on user research that represent different user types. Personas help teams empathize with users and design solutions that meet their needs.

• Storyboards: Sequential visualizations that depict how a user interacts with a product or service over time. Storyboards help teams understand the user journey and identify areas for improvement.

Common Challenges

Facilitators often face several challenges in scoping the best deliverable...

• Your Team: Most facilitators are busy, um, facilitating! Many solo facilitators have their hands full: standing at the front of the room, coaching other presenters, talking down nervous clients, managing materials, and the room setup. You need a team. And, at least one member of your team needs to be tracking content related to the deliverable.

• Aligning Objectives: Ensuring the deliverable aligns with the workshop's objectives, and stakeholders' expectations can be challenging. Facilitators need to balance different priorities and perspectives.

• Defining Scope: Deciding the right level of detail for the deliverable is crucial. Too much detail can be overwhelming, while too little can be insufficient for guiding future actions.

• Ensuring Clarity: The deliverable must be clear and understandable to all stakeholders. Facilitators must ensure the deliverable effectively communicates the team's ideas and strategies.

Better Workshop Deliverables 

Peter has been working as a scribe and making deliverables since 1997. Over the years, the question of ‘How can we create something from collaborative design events that is useful to people afterward?’ has been a recurring theme. 

He frames a deliverable as anything from a group of people coming together in a facilitated collaborative environment, exploring ideas, or creating assets. This is something that comes out of that time together and that lives beyond those moments. 

This summer, Peter worked alongside Imaginal Labs where they facilitated a Nature and Spirit-Centered Design Shop in North Carolina for the Pachamama Alliance. This Design Shop brought together a diverse group of participants and practitioners, all of whom shared a deep commitment to nature and its preservation.

So, how do we use all these digital tools to preserve nature (and create deliverables)?

The first half of the Design Shop was highly designed with activities, assignments, etc. Throughout the Design Shop, the role of the facilitation team changed from producing inputs to capturing outputs using post-it notes, and flip charts, and documenting things in a way that can be used to create deliverables.

This specific process of creating a deliverable was very emergent. During the middle of the process at the event, they asked what are they going to make. 

They knew they wanted an archive of materials and a landing page to share and portray the emotion, the spirituality, and the diversity of the experience. After speaking with the members of the Pachamama Alliance, they discovered that The Alliance uses Hubspot to deliver their content. 

This was an extremely complex process because no one knew how to work Hubspot except for one member from the alliance and everything was happening on the spot. 

These were some important questions that were asked: 

1. Is this public or private? 

2. Who is going to manage afterward? 

3. Will it be our responsibility or will we hand it off to a member of the Pachamama Alliance? 

For the landing page, they wanted it to be experiential with artwork, diversity, music, etc. Then they went into a Learning Management System to create something to reflect the general content structure of the event.

The Learning Management System treated each content block as an Earthshot. An Earthshot was the term they used to refer to the different focus groups that looked at specific goals. 

There were a lot of moving parts in a short amount of time. They decided to put a summary for each Earthshot, and then link it to Box for the materials. 

For reference, here is the Pachamama Alliance Web Deliverable landing page: https://pachamama.org/2024-june-gathering. 

Resources

The main question is how we can help participants find deliverables more easily. 

How can we become smarter at educating our sponsor team/facilitation team/IT team and go into these events with a set of frameworks/questions to produce the best deliverable with the least friction?

These are the different formats a deliverable can take. It could be a simple to-do list or a printed document.

.

Important questions to consider are: 

• Are they physically and digitally widely distributed behind a secure network? 

• What is the size of the document? 

• Who owns the product and who is responsible for it? 

• For the apps and platforms who knows how to use them and use them well?

Before going into group discussion, Peter provided one final example of a deliverable from The Happening. This was a Design Shop network event that took place over the summer. Nick Lotes at KPMG  led the design of the deliverable. It began with a touch point around logistics and establishing where and when this happened. Participants self-recorded all the content, and each day there were different waves (or timeslots) of discussions and breakouts. It was up to the participants to add photographs and record their work. 

This format is self-managed by participants, the only downside is if they do not participate. It is a trade-off, which is key in designing deliverables. 

The Happening 2024 Web Deliverable: https://happeningx.in.howspace.com/2024-topics

Group discussion

There were eight different topics posted on Miro. Participants went into groups to discuss one of the eight topics and come up with essential questions that would be helpful to ask and be answered around the topic assigned to them. 

Here are some of the participant's reflections:

• As a form of engagement, have a check-in after six weeks or three months. This gives you a chance to check in and see how successful the deliverables are. 

• Everyone receives emails daily. Maybe providing something physical as a deliverable would have more impact. Physical things linger around whereas emails can be lost. 

• AI as a deliverable. You can use it to summarise and suggest topics. The only problem with this is there are strict policies on privacy. Are there clients that are open to using AI?

• The usability of the content is up to humans whether they are going to use it. 

• What is a good process for feedback? At the end of the session ask for participant feedback or have a post meeting with the sponsor team. In order to have feedback you need a way to measure that feedback. 

• Playing cards as a deliverable. Trading cards as a deliverable. Postcards from the future are written during the Design Dhop and mailed out weeks later. 

Introduction

Professors from the University of Michigan were researching toxic mud from coal dumping that made the water too dangerous to swim and fish from on the shores of Lake Superior. They held a community engagement session and invited residents to join. Among others who joined, there was a large attendance from the elders of the Bad River Indian Nation tribe. 

The professors were two white men who were there to engage the community. They gave a 30-minute presentation to the group and followed it by opening the floor to questions. One of the elders stood up and asked, “Who fires you?”.  It was at that moment that these men realized they were under-prepared. They did not know anyone who they were talking to. The members of the tribe have seen this happen over and over again for hundreds of years, outsiders would attempt to fix things, and they would do little to no research on the client group. 

This session emphasizes doing homework to avoid making the same mistakes as those professors.

The Client Discovery process is a crucial step in any consulting engagement. It involves gathering comprehensive information about the client, their business, and their goals. This process lays the foundation for building strong relationships, understanding client needs, and developing practical solutions. By conducting a thorough client discovery process, designers can gain a deep understanding of their client's challenges and opportunities, enabling them to deliver tailored solutions that drive results.

Challenges  

All of these problems that we are working with are wicked problems. They all relate to each other, and there is no real final solution. 

A wicked problem can be defined as “a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often hard to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; and wicked denotes resistance to resolution rather than evil.” - Wikipedia.

During the client discovery process, we are asking our clients to define very complex situations that may be very difficult to define. At the same time, simultaneously, we may be limited in our knowledge. 

At this time, the group went into breakouts to discuss their significant challenges when working with client groups. Here are some of the responses:

• How do I connect with a new industry or domain? 

• Jumping to solutions too early in the discovery process. 

• Learning how to facilitate different points of view and creating a balance between the built environment and the people we have.

• The ability to notice small details that make a difference in the outcome. 

• What is your current state of practice with client discovery vs. what is intuitive? 

• How do you start the discovery call? 

Having the solution

One problem you may have dealt with during a client discovery is that you already have the skillset, the tools, or the methods to create or find the solution. But the solution is only one-third of the engagement. As facilitators, we rush ahead because that is where we feel comfortable. We are not fully completing the job when we skip over the other dimensions. Our job is to help the system or the community to become more intelligent, not just to deliver our solution. 

It is essential to set a foundation and to know where the discovery process falls in the sales process. You must decide how much advice to provide in the opening pre-sale conversation versus a post-sale or post-engagement discovery process. The goal is to find the proper engagement so you can price it accordingly.

The model below is an MG Taylor model that can be helpful in this process. 

At the Baseline, the client presents the problem. 

Level 1 is contextual language. For someone who is outside of the industry or company, they need to learn the language. What are the terms of art or pattern language specific to the problem, group, company, or industry? 

Level 2  is similar patterns. This ties into the question of how much consulting should be thrown in. This is an area where we can lean on models, frameworks, and different workflows.

Level 3 is the last level up. It speaks to a model's framework outside of the organization that might be helpful in stretching the clients into thinking differently. 

What are good questions to ask?

Tom Sylvest, a member of TVW, has put together a list of phrases useful for your and the client's understanding, establishing a point of view and changing assumptions. These are essential seeds to plant with your clients so that when you broaden the number of participants, you can refer back to the importance of establishing different points of view.

Below are who and what questions Rob Evans uses when developing a sponsor team.

It is important to Ask various ‘what’ questions. By doing this, you are helping the client decide 

“Yes this is a large enough set of stakes that we need to invest time energy, and resources in order to get it right and we need u to help us build a process.”- Peter Durand

Who questions can be used to determine who should be invited to design this engagement and who should be a participant.

Your Host

Peter Durand is an artist, educator, and graphic facilitator in Houston, Texas (USA). He was born in the highlands of Kenya but grew up near the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. He studied painting, illustration, and printmaking at Washington University in St. Louis, the Cité des Arts in Paris, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. He worked his first DesignShop® in 1996, founded Alphachimp in 1998, and has been involved in growing the practice of graphic recording and facilitation ever since.

Since 2007, he has facilitated the MGT-designed NavCenter at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. He has worked with talented clinicians, administrators, faculty, students, and patients in one of the nation’s leading healthcare networks.

Introduction

This workshop aims to expose participants to new frameworks and methodologies that will be helpful when working with external groups, internal groups, or clients. These methodologies help stretch design scenarios into design responses to those scenarios.

What is a Product Service Map?

A product service map is a dynamic visual tool that helps you understand the interactions between products, services, and stakeholders within a system. It provides a holistic view of how various components work together to deliver value, especially in the context of creating social impact. By mapping out the relationships, touchpoints, and dependencies, a product service map becomes a powerful guide for designing solutions that address intricate social problems.

Service Design

The session began with breakout groups where the participants introduced themselves and discussed their first service job. A service job can be anything that provides a service to anyone.

Once the participants regrouped, our host, Peter Durand, broke down what is involved in the design of a service.

To do this, he introduced Palmer’s Hot Chicken Restaurant as a case study.

Palmer's Hot Chicken is a family-owned restaurant that started when the owner followed his dream of opening his own restaurant after being in the service industry for years. He works alongside his wife, who operates all the behind-the-scenes and keeps the restaurant running. They own three restaurants, one in Dallas and two in Georgia. They also have two food trucks and run catering services. Their main product is a hot chicken sandwich.

The service of preparing and serving food involves different levels: the front stage, which is what the customer experiences, sees, smells, and hears. The back stage, which is the behind-the-scenes. And the ideas/innovation stage that feeds all of that production.

Participants went back into their breakout groups to discuss the different elements of each stage. Here is what they came up with:

The customer wants to eat Nashville fried chicken, has a budget of about $25, and doesn't have to worry about making a mess.

For the Front Stage, the participants listed important factors/happenings: transactions, menu, open seating, the restaurant’s design, cleanliness, what it sounds like when you walk in, and what it smells like.

In the Back Stage are ingredients, equipment, production, information systems, management systems, food storage, insurance and maintenance, and security.

Ideas and innovation consist of the recipe, ways to innovate and prepare food, and the use of QR codes for menus.

It is essential to understand your customer. Who are they, and why are they seeking that service? Are they able to access your service?

Design for Impact

Kevin Starr is the director of the Mulago Foundation, which funds startups in the social enterprise realm. He supplies funds to companies attempting to solve a social problem, a health problem, an energy problem, or a transformation and build a business model around that. The goal is to build something sustainable and scalable over time. Through observing him in his work, Peter learned about the design for impact.

According to Starr, you have a need and the potential for growing or scaling a sustainable product or service. But can you bridge the gap between the need and the potential?

There are two questions that he forces everyone to answer:

Who needs what you have in terms of the product or service?

Who can use it?

This is where most social sector products and services fail.

Let us deconstruct this.

One company Kevin Starr worked with is called Earth Enable. The co-founders met in their early 20s doing service work as teachers in Rwanda. One major problem they noticed was a limited attendance. There were various reasons for this, but the number one cause was illness from parasites. So, they began to explore how they could help.

The first question that needed answering was how were they getting these parasites? The answer was through the soil. Many kids were barefoot, and they were contracting the parasites. So they worked to solve this.

The answer came through installing floors. But this was a big task/challenge to take on.

Going into breakout groups, the participants took this information to explore/deep dive into the website of Earth Enable to see their design for impact.

In the breakout groups, one person scanned the history and values page, another the products page, and another the impact statement page. Then they came back together to map out what they learned about the service model.

This is the first step in the process.

The second is mapping out how it needs to be done.

The co-founders of Earth Enable started with understanding parasites. They then moved onto the flooring and into understanding and designing new ways of flooring. Then they had to build a whole business ecosystem of installers and promoters.

Because the Minister was the head of the village and many people stepped foot into their house, the co-founders went to the minister's house and offered to install the flooring for free as a demonstration. The sales soon followed.

Besides this model, the business canvas model (which was discussed in a previous Design Gym session) is a way to lead discussions and map a system from one part of a business to another. From Change Labs, they have formulated a document on the theory of change and how to build an ecosystem for entrepreneurship. Models can be great tools for deepening understanding and refining the service.

Your Host

Peter Durand is an artist, educator, and graphic facilitator in Houston, Texas (USA). He was born in the highlands of Kenya but grew up near the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. He studied painting, illustration, and printmaking at Washington University in St. Louis, the Cité des Arts in Paris, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. He worked his first DesignShop® in 1996, founded Alphachimp in 1998, and has been involved in growing the practice of graphic recording and facilitation ever since.