

Critique workshops: Ensure that design decisions align to user needs.Prioritization workshops: Build consensus on which features customers (or other stakeholders) value most and prioritize them.Design workshops: Rapidly generate and discuss a wide set of ideas with a diverse group of attendees.Empathy workshops: Help a broad team or stakeholders understand and prioritize user needs before designing a solution.Discovery workshops: Communicate the current state and create consensus for milestones and plans.This article outlines 5 common types of UX workshops: Workshops work best in situations that require greater input and consensus from diverse groups, or that would benefit from greater sense of shared ownership in a collaborative, hands-on format.Meetings are for project updates or general awareness discussions.When deciding if a UX workshop is appropriate for your situation, remember these guidelines: Preparation: Workshops take much longer to prepare than meetings, because of the length, materials, and tools required, activities that need to be planned, and necessary buy-in.Structure: Often, meetings are passive in nature (i.e., attendees listen and absorb), while workshops encourage active participation in activities such as sketching, brainstorming, affinity diagramming or artifact creation these activities organize and capture group progress.

Length: Meetings are usually measured in half-hours or hours (hopefully!), while workshops are measured in half-days or days.Scope: Meetings typically allow shallow coverage of many issues, while workshops are best for deep, focused coverage of one issue.Purpose: While meetings are a way to share or exchange information among team members, workshops are a method to solve a problem, develop a plan, or reach a decision.Several variables distinguish workshops from traditional meetings: Workshops enable participants to come together for a concentrated time of idea generation and hands-on activities that allow them to achieve an actionable goal. Definition: UX workshops are intensive collaborative sessions used to solve problems and enable progress on a particular challenge throughout the design timeline.
