UX Training

B2B Design Thinking workshops - Creation & Training

Overview

CLIENT:

Expedia

Banque Saudi Franci (BSF)

TEAM:

2 Workshop leaders

MY ROLE:

Workshop co-leader

DURATION:

7 hours for Expedia

9 hours for BSF (2x 4.5 hours)

Role

I was a workshop co-leader, along with my UX director at the time, Aditi Kant. From creating the deck, to teaching the information, & supporting the groups, we successfully moderated these workshops together!

Challenges

  • To create Design Thinking Workshops which were:

    • Tailored to the specific industries of the businesses (e.g. for Expedia, we focused on a “Hotel Manager” persona, while for BSF, we focused on the user journeys for people applying for house loans through the app.

    • In simplified language, while still being educational, so that cross-functional team members could all collaborate and understand

What did the workshops include?

  • Introduction to Design Thinking

  • Case Study Briefing

  • Empathize

  • Define

  • Ideate

  • Prototype

  • Test

  • Present

  • Final Discussion

Topics

  • Icebreakers

  • Team Assignment

  • Personas

  • Journey Maps

  • Identifying Pain Points

  • How Might We?

  • Card Sorting

Activities

  • Information Architecture

  • Brainstorming solutions

  • Figma Prototyping

  • Testing Your Solutions

  • Conclusion

  • Tell Your Story

  • Questions & Feedback

Expedia

Duration:

Location:

Tools:

Attendees:

7 hours

Remote sessions on Zoom

FigJam & Figma

Cross-functional teams across Expedia - total of 8 attendees

Feedback from attendees

Banque Saudi Franci (BSF)

Duration:

Location:

Tools:

Attendees:

9 hours total (4.5 hrs / day)

Riyadh, KSA

Sticky notes, markers, pens, paper prototypes

50 attendees (25 x per day)

Positives

  • Activities were quite positively received amongst all workshops

  • Having mentors going around the classroom or dedicated to a group (when remote) was extremely beneficial

  • Providing real-life anecdotes and stories to tell the learners was helpful

  • Randomizing teams worked better than pre-assigning teams

  • Setting expectations beforehand with supervisors / learners was critical

Reflection

Negatives

  • Duration of workshop felt overwhelming to some learners, especially for learners in the 8 hr Expedia session

  • Due to time constraints and trying to cover a lot of material, some activities felt too rushed

  • Too much theoretical talk, especially for an intro course, tended to bore the learners - keep theoretical talk lighter

  • Getting too detailed with a niche case study was overwhelming to learners - choosing industry-specific issues with mass market appeal would be best

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed being a UX workshop leader - and because of my former teaching background, I was able to easily find my stride with these workshops.

If given the opportunity, I would absolutely break the content down more into digestable chunks, and ensure the attendees had enough time for the activities (which, from their feedback), was the most enjoyable part of the process!