As part of the UXStrat 15 conference, Charles and I co-facilitated a half-day workshop for Presumptive Design. We had three objectives:

• Introduce Presumptive Design as a rapid method of strategy validation
• Allow workshop attendees to apply the process
• Explore how to validate strategies before executing on them to reduce risk

We had ~50 participants in the room, all of whom were senior UX practitioners: researchers, strategists, managers and designers. Attendees came from all types of organizations: for-profit and non-profit clients, agencies, startups and large companies.

The workshop built on a sibling workshop facilitated in the morning by our friend and associate, Jim Kalbach. We relied on Jim’s workshop to act as the Creation Session, in which each team crafted an “alignment diagram” for a hypothetical situation. As is our usual practice, we spent about 30% of the workshop introducing Presumptive Design in the context of its theoretical framework. About 50% of the time, attendees engaged in hands-on exercises including working with actual end-users to test their assumptions. The remaining time was open discussion among the participants to dive deeper into topics or questions.

The level of energy and engagement was high throughout the afternoon – no mean feat given the post-lunch stupor many of us could have succumbed to. For most attendees, their skepticism at the start of the session resolved into understanding by the workshop’s end. Participants asked tough questions throughout the day, including: “How can this sparse diagram be used to help the client’s strategy?” and “How can we expect users to inform our strategy merely by their engagement with an abstract customer journey map?”

By the session’s end, we believe attendees’ questions had been answered to almost everyone’s satisfaction.

Interested in hosting a workshop for your organization?

Get in touch and we can discuss particulars.