The Art of Remote Facilitation
How might we create online workshops that are as engaging as those in person?
Faculty Leads:
Sari Gluckin
Susan Stirling
Class:
Facilitation Methods
Partner: The Nora Project
Project Team 1:
Jessica Bogart Kasper
Kyungtae Kim
Brian Siegfried
Partner: CreativeCon
Project Team 2:
Justin Bartkus
Kanal Chhajed
Yoichi Kanayama
Partner: SOAR
Project Team 3:
Tommie Collins
Lavanya Julaniya
Anna Olsztynska
Closing activity: in week 1, students create collages that represent what good facilitation looks like. In week 7, they returned to that activity to identify key takeaways from the class.
In Facilitation Methods, students learn how to become adept facilitators through hands-on practice and exposure to facilitation principles, processes and techniques. This semester, students learned the art of online remote facilitation. Student teams designed engaging workshops for their clients who had real challenges to solve in their organizations. The students created interactive exercises on Mural and Zoom and facilitated workshops that helped their clients arrive at possible approaches and solutions to their respective challenges.
“I learned the power of designers to help clients switch from being “stuck” and “overwhelmed” to a space of optimism and positivity. The mindset of a designer is so valuable to generate ideas and powerful reframes of problems and challenges.”
“Facilitation is really an art. It is about knowing when to deploy certain tools to help people think through ideas in a whole new way. It is about undoing established mental models to unlock new pathways. You never really know where you will end up, which can be somewhat daunting. This class really helped us understand different types of thinking that occur throughout a workshop, different methods to deploy and when, and how to guide and facilitate a group of people (through a virtual session, even!) into the great unknown. ”
“Our group learned the importance of laser precision in budgeting time, the importance of feeling the pains and struggles that a customer faces in solving a longstanding, complex problem, and the limitations and possibilities of remote facilitation. Though it certainly brings its own challenges, remote facilitation also enables features that are not available in analogue: better archiving, smoother democratic procedures, and creative multimedia flexibility that improves over pure marker and paper. We believe that a rhythmic blend of remote and face-to-face facilitation will become an effective medley for designers to utilize in the future.”
Team 1: The Nora Project
The Nora Project is a non-profit that provides curriculum and programming across K-12 allowing students to explore disability, adaptation, and friendship by challenging students to practice empathy and exercise moral courage.
The Nora team successfully delivers year-long programming to over 50 schools. However, they struggle to engage busy teachers to gain access to the stories and interactions taking place inside the classrooms. Our team designed a 3-hour remote workshop and invited members of the Nora team and ID design students to explore the question: How might we design a technology tool that provides access to the stories and successes within classrooms while improving the 2-way engagement between The Nora Project and teachers?
Throughout the workshop, we led participants through a series of activities using an online tool called Mural. We defined the problem space, ideated on solutions and then developed the ideas into storyboards and specific concepts.
At the end, the client walked away with three actionable outcomes, some of which they are putting into practice this summer.
To learn more about this remote facilitation session click here.
Team 2: CreativeCon*
CreativeCon* (the real name of the business has been amended) is a creative consultancy started up by a group of highly skilled and publicly renowned creatives looking to cross over into consulting. CreativeCon's core idea was compelling, but its marketing strategy remained in the development stages: who was the customer? What were his or her challenges and pain points? Where are we going to get ideas for reaching this customer and speaking in their language, while still remaining true to who we are?
These crucial, fuzzy, questions formed the basis of a remote facilitation offered to CreativeCon by a team of ID students. Using virtual whiteboarding tools, the student team guided the client through exercises in problem definition and group alignment, customer empathy, cross-competitor scans, and development of a value proposition version 2.0.
Team 3: SOAR
As facilitators, we worked with our pioneering client, SOAR (Test Prep for All), to create ideas where vital dialogue in a form of tutoring flourish. We have invited our aspiring peers and client to a remote workshop to learn about the potential in adapting to the new forms of tutoring. We have facilitated a group of people where participants engaged in conversation, looked beyond the limits of the digital space, and inspired our client to see the potential of making the tutoring remote-friendly.
To learn more about this remote facilitation session click here.