Human-Centered Design Workshops
Learn how to use your user-centered lens to design workshops that start by considering the people involved (free worksheet included)
Human-centered design (HCD) is a hugely influential idea. Since the 1990s, a whole field has risen around this intersection of humans and technology, the concept behind human-centered design.
Putting the user of technology at the heart of everything we design allows us to consider more than just technical requirements. This extra consideration for the user can differentiate between products we love and those we hate.
Every UX designer in the room just fell asleep…
If you were bored, it's probably because your experience level is way beyond human-centered design. The same thing can happen to your audience when you don't center your workshops around them.
1. Your workshop participants are your users.
If you're designing a workshop, your workshop participants become your user.
Remember, you are not the user. Your motivations for giving a workshop are not the same as the participants’ motivations for joining the workshop.
The user lens for audiences is just as critical as the user lens in our products and services. Human-centered workshops mean it's about the participant, not the designer.
Nobody wants to hear about you if it doesn't apply to them. People want to identify with a presentation and gain value from it. If you don't put in the effort to make that happen, your audience will almost certainly lose interest.
2. Start your workshop design process with the participants.
If you've never thought about applying your human-centered lens to a workshop participant, you're not alone.
Designers love to talk about design processes and the problem space, but we tend to focus too much on the solution side of workshops: slides, activities, and assets.
Designers are good at creating visuals but just because we're good at them doesn't mean we should start with them.
Jumping to details like workshop assets too early can distract you from working on the story and delivery, so you should save the decorating for the end.
You wouldn't jump to high-fidelity designs for a website. Why would you jump to slide design for a workshop?
3. Anticipate the experience by creating a “workshop persona.”
We can try out this human-centered lens for your future workshop participants with a few questions. These questions can help you build a “workshop persona.”
Ask yourself these questions to build your workshop persona:
Who will be in the room?
What's their title
What's their experience level with the topic?
Why are they bothering to show up?
What concerns might they have?
How will you address those concerns?
What do you want them to do after the workshop?
How did that feel? Did a certain person come to mind? Did it inspire some ideas?
If you can find the answers to any of these questions before the workshop, you will be giving yourself a huge head start towards creating a workshop that your audience will enjoy. Do a little research beforehand to make sure that your workshop design aligns with the participants.
Good workshop design is about people, so start there.
Good facilitators adapt their message to the participants. Great presenters start with the participants and put their needs at the center of the entire workshop design process.
Here are five ways to make your workshops more human-centered:
We hope this guide has helped you understand the benefits of putting the user first in your workshops. If you’re a UX, UI, or product designer, you already have the user-centered instinct trained. You just need to activate it for your events!
Free Template: Audience Strategy Worksheet
We designed an asset that you can use to create a workshop persona. This worksheet will activate a human perspective early in the process and help you form an audience strategy before you get into content, slides, or delivery.
