Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

How Your Organization's Generative Workshops Are Probably Going Wrong and How to Get Them Right
Gold
Tuesday, March 28, 2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Share the love for this talk
How Your Organization's Generative Workshops Are Probably Going Wrong and How to Get Them Right
Speakers: Anne Mamaghani
Link:

Summary

Generative workshops are a critical generative component of any product development process. But in my 20+ years conducting product user research, I have seen more product harm come from so-called "workshops" or "design sprints" than good. In this tutorial, I will share more about my experience and what I've found are critical components of generative workshops -- whether they last five hours or five days. Contrary to popular belief, a design sprint is a highly structured and carefully designed series of exercises, not a brainstorm, design jam or free-for-all. The whole point is to drive a cross-functional team to the right outcome, and this requires a set of structured exercises which weave the thread of user needs, behaviors and attitudes throughout. This involves more than reviewing the research at the start and then moving on to create without that research in context. A true design sprint takes us from user insights -- even broad user insights -- to user-evaluated concepts or designs. The generative phase of a product is deeply impactful, and design sprints are a fantastic tool for driving this needed impact. However, many are practicing brainstorms or design jams rather than true design sprints. One can make a mismatched concept extremely usable throughout the product development process, but that will not remedy the fact that it is not the right concept. Researchers are ideal design sprint organizers and facilitators, but researchers are sometimes not even considered a critical component of the sprint. It's important for knowledgeable researchers to drive design sprint impact.

Key Insights

  • Many generative workshops fail due to fundamental mistakes more often than they succeed.

  • The 'Sprint as theater' mistake occurs when workshops are done for appearances or political reasons rather than genuine product development.

  • Well-structured workshops with specific exercises are crucial to move from research data to human-centered product concepts.

  • Integrating research both before and after a workshop grounds concepts in real human needs and allows recovery if initial research is missing.

  • Excluding key decision-makers leads to surprise blockers after workshops and risks misalignment with product goals.

  • Facilitation is a distinct, practiced skill essential to managing group dynamics, pacing, and adapting exercises during workshops.

  • Scaling back workshops too much compromises their effectiveness and the quality of resulting concepts.

  • Explicit communication about workshop outcomes and quality is necessary to help stakeholders appreciate the method's value.

  • Training facilitators in focused, incremental sessions delivers practical skills necessary for leading effective workshops.

  • Ensuring equal participation requires setting clear engagement rules and providing tool training to accommodate varying skill levels.

Notable Quotes

"The outcome of this method really makes the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

"Sprint as theater is not going to result in a product concept that really represents human needs, behaviors, and attitudes."

"If there is no structured way to move from data to concept, you often end up with just a brainstorm, not a grounded concept."

"Lack of research before or after the workshop can be recovered from but at some cost to the concept’s validity."

"Excluding key people might save time but it often leads to surprise blockers and misaligned decisions later on."

"Facilitation is a skill that takes real practice; it’s about managing personalities, stamina, and knowing when to adapt exercises."

"There is a point where scaling back a workshop too much will make it ineffective and that trade-off must be explicit."

"Many stakeholders don’t inherently understand the difference in quality outcomes from workshops, so we must be explicit."

"Getting to know what people care about in the organization helps tailor workshops to support those goals and gain buy-in."

"It’s important to create a sincere environment where everyone feels they can equally participate, regardless of title or skill level."

Ask the Rosenbot
Alastair Simpson
Debunking the Myths of Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Smitha Papolu
Theme 3 Discussion
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Kaitlin Tasker
Fast and Fearless Inclusive Research
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Joshua Graves
We Need To Talk: Navigating Conversations with Your Boss (Part 1 of 3)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Mark Boulton
Ops without Designers
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Shipra Kayan
Emerging principles for using AI in Design: What the product design team at Miro has learned from deeply integrating AI in their workflow
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Peter Merholz
Customer-Centered Design Organizations
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Michelle Bejian Lotia
Rolling Out a Repository: How Zapier Centralizes Insights from Across their Organization
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Chelsea Mauldin
Let's Talk About Money
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Dave Malouf
The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 2)
2022 • DesignOps Community
Janaki Kumar
Innovate with Purpose
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Taylor Klassman
Shaping the Next Era of UX Research: Collaborative Forum
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Megan Blocker
A Selectively Scrappy Approach to ResearchOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Peter Van Dijck
Building the Rosenbot
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Joi Freeman
A New Vantage Point: Building a Pipeline for Multifaceted Research(ers)
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Lisa Welchman
Cleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold

More Videos

Louis Rosenfeld

"Building a portfolio of talks, refreshed over time, lets you keep evolving and sharing your ideas in different formats."

Louis Rosenfeld Jemma Ahmed Christian Crumlish Uday Gajendar Chris Geison

Coffee with Lou #3: What Makes for a Successful UX Conference Presentation?

May 2, 2024

Jilanna Wilson

"Support software used to be really shitty and expensive, and Zendesk set out to fix that by making it beautifully simple."

Jilanna Wilson

Distributed Design Operations Management

October 23, 2019

Matt Webb

"It’s actually embarrassing how little code there is and you get these incredible emergent effects."

Matt Webb

Context Window: Five Futures for AI

June 11, 2025

Sam Proulx

"It is very easy to tick all the accessibility checkboxes and still have a poor, ugly, and unhelpful product."

Sam Proulx

Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate

September 8, 2022

Theresa Neil

"We could become healthcare experts because we actually did have a portfolio in healthcare already."

Theresa Neil

Designing for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare

May 22, 2024

Peter Van Dijck

"Evals are everywhere, right? Everybody's talking about evals. It is like one of the key things in developing useful AI products."

Peter Van Dijck

Hands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge

October 15, 2025

Rachel Posman

"Design ops isn’t just a support role; it is a strategic partner involved in decision making."

Rachel Posman John Calhoun

"Ask Me Anything" with Rachel Posman and John Calhoun, Authors of the Upcoming Rosenfeld Book, The Design Conductors

September 25, 2024

Tricia Wang

"You have to ask who the 'we' is in the room, because often the communities you're designing for aren't represented or understood there."

Tricia Wang

The most popular design thinking strategy is BS

January 27, 2022

Sarah Auslander

"Who creates the conditions for civic design to slow down? Can we afford to slow down? Can we afford not to slow down?"

Sarah Auslander Betsy Ramaccia Gordon Ross

Insights Panel

November 18, 2022