User Experience Strategy Workshops

Your research findings are useless if they don't drive decisions. After watching countless brilliant insights disappear into the void, I developed 5 practical templates I use to transform research into action: 1. Decision-Driven Journey Map Standard journey maps look nice but often collect dust. My Decision-Driven Journey Map directly connects user pain points to specific product decisions with clear ownership. Key components: - User journey stages with actions - Pain points with severity ratings (1-5) - Required product decisions for each pain - Decision owner assignment - Implementation timeline This structure creates immediate accountability and turns abstract user problems into concrete action items. 2. Stakeholder Belief Audit Workshop Many product decisions happen based on untested assumptions. This workshop template helps you document and systematically test stakeholder beliefs about users. The four-step process: - Document stakeholder beliefs + confidence level - Prioritize which beliefs to test (impact vs. confidence) - Select appropriate testing methods - Create an action plan with owners and timelines When stakeholders participate in this process, they're far more likely to act on the results. 3. Insight-Action Workshop Guide Research without decisions is just expensive trivia. This workshop template provides a structured 90-minute framework to turn insights into product decisions. Workshop flow: - Research recap (15min) - Insight mapping (15min) - Decision matrix (15min) - Action planning (30min) - Wrap-up and commitments (15min) The decision matrix helps prioritize actions based on user value and implementation effort, ensuring resources are allocated effectively. 4. Five-Minute Video Insights Stakeholders rarely read full research reports. These bite-sized video templates drive decisions better than documents by making insights impossible to ignore. Video structure: - 30 sec: Key finding - 3 min: Supporting user clips - 1 min: Implications - 30 sec: Recommended next steps Pro tip: Create a library of these videos organized by product area for easy reference during planning sessions. 5. Progressive Disclosure Testing Protocol Standard usability testing tries to cover too much. This protocol focuses on how users process information over time to reveal deeper UX issues. Testing phases: - First 5-second impression - Initial scanning behavior - First meaningful action - Information discovery pattern - Task completion approach This approach reveals how users actually build mental models of your product, leading to more impactful interface decisions. Stop letting your hard-earned research insights collect dust. I’m dropping the first 3 templates below, & I’d love to hear which decision-making hurdle is currently blocking your research from making an impact! (The data in the templates is just an example, let me know in the comments or message me if you’d like the blank versions).

Employees often miss what #CX is about, so I have an ice-breaker activity I've used at the beginning of #CustomerExperience workshops. Now, I offer this idea to you: At first, this will seem obvious and perhaps unhelpful, but stick with me, please. The activity is to have small groups spend 10 minutes discussing what drove their satisfaction and dissatisfaction with recent air travel. No, the outcomes will not be surprising—but that hides a really important point that will shake up participants' expectations and attitudes. Of course, everyone says the same things in this exercise. "I was satisfied because we arrived on time." "The snacks were better than expected." "The seats were surprisingly comfortable." "The flight attendants were attentive and pleasant." And, on the other side, "I was dissatisfied by delays." "Communications about flight changes were poor." "The seat was cramped and awkward." "The staff was grumpy and indifferent." I'll spend a few minutes collecting the drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Everyone will nod in agreement. And then comes the point of this exercise: Absolutely no one will say that a driver of satisfaction was that the airline flew them six miles in the air and delivered them to their destination safely. In other words, the CORE experience--and the most important priority of any airline--drives virtually nothing in terms of customer relationships. Getting there safely is expected, not a driver of satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. That's the "aha." Whether you're talking to a group of healthcare workers who think their only essential function is reducing mortality and morbidity or a room of telecom execs who feel everything hinges only on uptime, the message is that it's not what we do but how we do it that drives differentiation, satisfaction, and loyalty. We all can become so focused on the delivery of our primary product or service--or achieving the chief KPIs--that we can neglect to understand the experience from the customer's perspective. Forcing people to consider their own experiences and perceptions as customers helps them to perceive that air travelers landing safely (or patients having successful surgeries, or your phone service working) isn't what drives differentiated CX and outstanding loyalty. Don't get me wrong—you can't miss the table stakes. An airline isn't forgiven for lax safety because it has fresh nuts, nor is a telecom company pardoned for unreliable service thanks to rapid call answer times. But delivering table stakes is not what drives the kind of rabid loyalty, sales, and margin enjoyed by brands with differentiated CX. Ensuring people realize this before introducing them to customer-centric concepts and practices opens their minds to new possibilities within their existing job roles.

One critical skill of great Product Managers is that they can take an immense amount of information and make sense out of it to find a path forward. Your job isn’t just to get the data, it’s to create action out of that data. But this is where many people get paralyzed. For product managers who struggle with this, I find tools like Affinity mapping extremely helpful to help organize your thoughts. Affinity Mapping is a basic facilitation and collaboration tool, but it’s extremely powerful. Put simply, it’s a practical way to sort through different pieces of data, group them into common themes, and discover valuable insights. Whether you're dealing with complicated user research or trying to get everyone on the same page, this method helps you focus and find your way forward. Here's how to run an Affinity Mapping session that's not just productive, but also a bit of fun: 1️⃣ Gather Your Data: Start with all the raw data you have – post-its from brainstorming, customer feedback, interview notes, you name it. Get it all on the table. Literally. 2️⃣ Invite the Right People: Bring together a diverse group from your team. Yes, diversity! You want different perspectives – designers, developers, marketers, and especially those who are often quiet but have brilliant thoughts simmering under the surface. 🧠 3️⃣ Create a Safe Space: Before diving in, set the stage for open collaboration. Remind everyone that every idea is valuable and we're here to discover, not judge. This is about finding patterns, not picking favorites. 4️⃣ Sort and Cluster: Now, get sticky! Start placing related ideas together. Don't overthink it. Go with your gut. You'll see themes start to emerge as you cluster similar thoughts. It's like a puzzle where the picture becomes clearer with each piece. 🧩 5️⃣ Label the Themes: Once you have your clusters, give each one a name that captures the essence of the ideas within it. These labels will be your guideposts for action later on. 6️⃣ Reflect and Discuss: Take a step back. What do you see? Any surprises? Discuss as a group and make sure everyone's voice is heard. This is where the magic happens – insights start to bubble up to the surface. 7️⃣ Prioritize and Act: Finally, decide what's most important. Which themes align with your goals? Which insights are game-changers? Make a plan to act on these priorities. Affinity mapping is not just about organizing thoughts; it's about unlocking the collective wisdom of your team. It's a powerful way to build consensus and ensure everyone's voice is heard. So, next time you're grappling with data overload, grab some sticky notes and start mapping! What else have you used to help organize your thoughts and data? #ProductManagement #UserResearch #Collaboration #AffinityMapping

Battling business superstitions and “lore” is critical -- what do I mean? The only thing worse than making decisions with no data is making decisions based on poor-quality data—or making decisions on no real data at all—just a perception we have or what we want to believe is true. A common situation is when a team is brought together to solve a problem. Without current data and appropriate framing, the session quickly devolves into sharing opinions, old stories, and “this is how we’ve always done it” defense mechanisms. This is not helpful. Inaccurate information leads to wrong assumptions. Because when we think we “know” that something is true, like “Pluto is a planet” (is it or isn’t it these days? – depends on who you ask) or “this age group won’t like X,” we subconsciously shut down other decision pathways. We close the door on considering alternatives. It’s important to remind ourselves that opinions without contextual data are simply opinions – and poor KPIs may throw them off. We need to ask: Which data? From what source, which timeframe, and what authority? How much do we take for granted? But false data is worse than missing data. I call this “lore.” We each have to challenge our personal and corporate assumptions to ensure that the data we collect and evaluate is accurate and useful. Things change. Our beliefs need to be updated with new data and experience too. We know we can’t go overboard in questioning our assumptions; uncertainty and doubt lead to analysis paralysis. At some point, we all recognize that we'll never have all the data we need. That is where intuition and shared experiences kick in. That is also where new data and updated experiences should kick in. Ask yourself: Once we had confidence in this assumption because we did an analysis. How long ago was that? Does the conclusion still hold water? How do we know? When was the last time you had that conversation with yourself or your team? 

It has been a while since I've done one of these. Let's look at a card from a card deck! For those who don't know me — Hi, I'm Rach, and I have a card deck problem — I'm obsessed with them. This card comes from the Pip Decks Innovation Tactics deck by Tom Kerwin. Let's jump into *10-Star Experience* What the heck is it? 🤔 ↳ An activity that pulls you to the extreme of reviewing a product or service. It helps your participants think BIG. ⚡️ How to do it... ↳ Step 1: Put the prompt out to the group to "Write the story of a 10-star customer experience" — encourage them to use words, pictures, drawings, video, whatever they want! ↳ Step 2: Provide a space for people to gather these ideas. Virtually this might be a Miro board. In-person maybe you designate some large format paper on tables or blank walls. Give people the environment to get creative. ↳ Step 3: Invite participants to read other's stories and digest those. At the same time, ask those participants to indicate pieces of the story they felt were exciting or surprising (you can use dots for this type of indication) ↳ Step 4: As a group look at the items that were called out with dots and review those. Bring interesting insights into your next activities. 💜 What I love about it... ↳ It helps people think differently when you expand the review beyond just words, like having people add drawings or pictures. ↳ Going past the 5-star review helps people get the craziest responses out of their heads, which is what we want! 💪 How you can use, remix, or even flip this approach.. ↳ Use: I like to use this activity for brand strategy or product development workshops to put participants in the mindset of their audience. ↳ Remix: Switch it up to a 10-star experience social media post, in the style of user-generated content. Giving this different perspective helps people think less formally in terms of a "review" ↳ Flip: What would a NEGATIVE 10-star experience look like? Flip it so people can look at it from another view. Just like starting with the worst ideas in a brainstorm, this helps people relax a bit more and have fun with it; get all those negative thoughts out first - then you can look at why those reviews are bad and turn the lemons into lemonade. 🔥 Facilitator tips for this activity... ↳ Use a Me-We-Us approach where you have everyone contribute individually first, then share in small groups, and then return to the larger group. ↳ Use the craziest idea award in conjunction with this to gamify it, and help people think bigger. ↳ Switch up your dots and use emojis (virtually or in-person stickers) What do you think? Would you use this activity? --- Found this useful? 🔄 Repost for your network. 🎉

Back leading workshops for the first time since Unilever days. I love workshops/offsites. But it’s helpful to clarify what they are for and what they are definitely *not* for. The biggest mistake I see teams make is thinking that these are for “ideation” or “brainstorming”. While this kind of kumbayah creativity is common and feels good in the moment… it rarely produces anything of value. The conditions for creativity generally and ideation specifically cannot just be manufactured in a room with a fixed time box. That’s why you’re far more likely to come up with a brilliant idea walking your dog, rather than being locked in a room with senior SaaS leaders. These workshop sessions are for making decisions. Getting alignment. So here’s what you can do to make sure the outcomes actually drive your business forward: - Get all the right people in the room. You need representation from the departments that will be doing the work. - Encourage diversity of opinion. Arguments are healthy; you don’t want a room full of yes-people. Expect tension. - Make pre-work mandatory. Homework is good. This is where the ideas happen. Capture them and bring them to the sessions. - Map your agenda to energy levels. Be realistic about three 8-hour workshops, don’t put something heavy at 5pm on the third day. - Furthermore, be ruthless about agenda. Rabbit holes and tangents do not produce results, they just muddy your clarity. - Ditch the decks when you can. Nobody pays attention, they are poor communication tools, and they take too long to prepare. - Make the output digestible. No 40-page PDF. Make it shareable and easy to review.

Stakeholders don’t hate UX. They hate UX language. After 9+ years of watching incredible work go unnoticed by the powers that be, I’m certain of this: The problem usually isn’t the research. Or the design. It’s the translation. We speak UX—they speak business. If you want your work to land, you have to bridge that gap. Here’s how: 1️⃣ Translate insights into impact ❌ “Our usability testing revealed friction in the checkout flow.” ✅ “We uncovered a bottleneck costing $50K/month in abandoned carts.” 2️⃣ Lead with the outcome, not the method Don’t open with how you ran the study. Open with what it means for the business: “This change could lift conversion 15%.” Then explain how you got there. 3️⃣ Use their success metrics UX metrics are for us. Execs want CAC, LTV, churn, retention. Frame your work in their language. 4️⃣ Show, don’t summarize Skip the 40-slide deck. Play a 90-second video of a user getting stuck. You don’t need buy-in when someone feels the pain. 5️⃣ Make it about them—not us ❌ “UX research shows…” ✅ “Your customers are telling us…” Same data. Different gravity. The best UX leaders I know? They’re translators first, designers second. They turn user frustration into business opportunity. Research findings into revenue forecasts. Because influence doesn’t come from pixels. It comes from speaking the right language. What’s your go-to phrase for getting stakeholder buy-in? Drop it below—someone may need it. #uxdesign #uxleadership #productstrategy ——— 👋 Hi, I’m Dane—I love sharing design tips + strategies. ❤️ Found this helpful? Dropping a like shows support. 🔄 Share to help others (& for easy access later). ➕ Follow for more like this in your feed every day.

You can present UX insights so cleanly… ...that people don’t realize they’re supposed to care. Polished ≠ persuasive. The moment you strip out tension, you also strip out urgency. Stakeholders don’t act because they understand. They act because they feel the COST OF NOT ACTING. This is one of the most common traps I see in coaching sessions ↴ Strong research. Clean delivery. But no momentum. Here’s how I help clients reframe their insights so the room moves: S.E.N.S.E. Framework ↴ S→ Stakeholder Tension ↳ Start with the pressure THEY feel. E→ Evidence of the User Problem ↳ One stat. One quote. That’s it. N → Narrative Emotion ↳ What does this feel like for the user? (confusion? hesitation? lost trust?) S→ Strategic Risk or Opportunity ↳ What is it? (i.e churn, conversion, support load, business risk?) E→ End with a Clear Next Step ↳ Make the ask obvious, small, and safe. Don't try to oversell. Just frame your work in a way that earns a decision. I shared a full breakdown + a downloadable worksheet in this week’s UX Mentor Diaries (because "being right" isn’t enough if the room doesn’t FEEL it ;) → https://lnkd.in/eC4aah6i ✍️ If you like this, you’d probably like my newsletter where I share with 6,500+ UX pros 2 short, tactical reads a week on growing your impact, influence and UX career. You’re welcome to join us → uxmentor.substack.com

Hack Your Team's Mindset: 5 Unconventional Warmups for Innovation Workshops 🧠⚡ Ever run an innovation workshop that felt like trying to start a car with a dead battery? That first 30 minutes determines whether you'll get breakthrough ideas or recycled thinking. Something that I call getting into the “psychology of innovation”. After facilitating several sessions, I've discovered something surprising: the traditional "let's go around and introduce ourselves" kills creative energy before it starts. Your team's brains are still in operational mode—not possibility mode. Here are five unconventional warmups I've tested that rewire neural pathways for innovation in under 20 minutes: 1. The Impossible Question Challenge 🔥 Start by asking questions that have no "correct" answers: "How would you design a restaurant on Mars?" or "What if sleep became optional?" This immediately signals we're breaking free from conventional thinking. 2. The Reality Bending Exercise ✨ Have everyone write down three "unchangeable facts" about your industry. Then challenge teams to imagine a world where each "fact" is no longer true. As Steve Jobs said, "Reality can be distorted"—this exercise trains that muscle. 3. The Reverse Assumptions Game 🔄 List 5-10 core assumptions about your business. Then systematically reverse each one: "What if we charged more for less?" or "What if our customers became our employees?" This shatters mental models almost instantly. 4. The "Yes, And..." Chain Reaction ⛓️ One person proposes a wild idea. Instead of evaluating it, the next person must say "Yes, and..." adding something to evolve it further. Continue for 3-5 minutes. This dismantles our innate criticism reflex. 5. Two-Minute Futures ⏱️ Give everyone two minutes to draw what your industry will look like in 2040. The time constraint bypasses the analytical brain and accesses the intuitive one. The crude drawings often reveal surprising insights about shared hopes and fears. Remember: Innovation doesn't need fancy frameworks—it needs minds free from invisible constraints. These warmups aren't just games; they're pattern-disruptors that help your team escape their mental programming. What's your go-to innovation warmup? Have you tried activities that break conventional thinking patterns? #InnovationWorkshops #CreativeThinking #DesignThinking #TeamFacilitation #Creativity #TransformativeMindset

When you hear the word “𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝,” STOP because anyone can fall for that trap—even NASA. Okay, so I know that sounds a little clickbait-y, but it happened… right in front of me. A while back, a team at NASA came to me with a clear request: 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘶𝘴 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘴𝘰 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵. Sounds simple enough, right? They talked about how the platform 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 increased productivity and collaboration of the org. When those outcomes were not gained, project leads assumed the problem was about usability. Over the years, I’ve learned that whenever I hear the word “should,” especially in a project’s early stages, it’s a sign to pause and get curious. And my gut told me we were definitely missing something. Here’s the thing—if a tool is truly valuable, people don’t need to be convinced to use it. So, instead of diving headfirst into a usability study, I took a step back and asked a bigger question: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮? Turns out, the way their teams worked together didn’t align with how the tool was designed to function. The real problem wasn’t the platform—it was the team’s workflow. Once we redirected our focus accordingly, we were able to come up with solutions that actually made an impact on productivity and collaboration. I’m not sharing this to say “Look at me! I worked with NASA!” (Although, that was cool) I’m sharing this because I think researchers can easily slip into being order-takers vs. strategic partners when it comes to scoping new projects. And it can happen without you even knowing it…particularly when your stakeholders are projecting—with confidence—what they perceive the problem is that needs to be solved. So, what does it mean to be a strategic partner in this case? -Ask many questions & challenge assumptions. -Approach scoping intent on distinguishing facts from assumptions. -Listen as much for what’s unsaid as for what is expressed. I could have conducted a usability study on the team’s collaboration platform. And I’m sure new product specifications would have come out of that work scope. Yet, none of those product improvements would have moved the needle on improving the team’s real goal, which was to enable better collaboration across the team. That all changed when we began to structure the project as a workflow initiative vs. a usability study. Moral of the story? Scope with a healthy dose of skepticism, ready to dig into every sentence that has the word “𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝” in it. When you do, you’ll walk away with a full understanding of what the team needs to achieve their real goal. Chances are, the real answer is hiding somewhere just beyond what’s being said at the start of that conversation. When was the last time you questioned a “should”? What was the result? Tell me about your experiences below! #Innovation #ProblemSolving #CustomerInsight