Increasing engagement in workshops: designing a toolkit using lean design thinking

Creative workshops are a key element of design and innovation processes. User research on workshop facilitation resulted in the notion that facilitators face the most problems related to engaging their workshop participants. Furthermore, it informed us that problems with engagement can be caused by many different reasons. Therefore, three different tools were designed to be used in different situations before, during and after a workshop, whenever the facilitator feels it can be helpful. Together the tools form an engagement toolkit for workshop facilitators of any kind of (design) workshop. The tools in the toolkit are designed using the lean design thinking approach, in which short iterations of 'building', 'measuring' and 'learning' are applied after a substantial period of user research. A summative evaluation of the complete toolkit at the end of the design process has shown that the tools are evaluated positively, by qualitative as well as quantitative measures, although facilitators and participants have personal preferences for specific tools.