Workshop Design
This page showcases a few samples of the workshops and instructor-led trainings that I’ve created in the past. Key to all my designs is a commitment to active learner involvement and a focus on experiential learning.
Storytelling for Impact
I designed this 2-part virtual workshop for a globally distributed team that was forced to move an annual offsite to a virtual format as a result of the COVID-19 travel restrictions.
In the first part I introduced several high-level user-centered design concepts, focusing in particular on user interview techniques. During the second part of the workshop, participants created empathy maps and used a custom-designed Storytelling for Impact canvas to plan a highly targeted elevator pitch.
The two portions of the workshop were separated by several weeks to allow participants to conduct interviews with their customers and coworkers—gathering business relevant information to use in the second workshop.
Participants conducted brainstorming, collaborated on user empathy maps, and created individual elevator pitch outlines in Google Jamboard.
Presentation & Speaking Skills
I’ve used a combination of off-the-shelf tools and custom activities to help participants learn basic content design and public speaking for presentations. Below are a few resources that I used in a series of workshops targeting younger and less experienced individuals to help build confidence and gain public speaking practice in a safe environment.
Rhetoric Public Speaking Game
This iPad game helps participants practice public speaking skills and build confidence in a fast-paced but low-stakes environment. I used it both as part of teaming activities and in stand-alone workshops, particularly for less-experienced employees who needed a safe place to build their confidence and experience when speaking in public.
Presentation SkillsThis workshop was a mixture of public-speaking best practices and hands-on exercises centered on clear and concise content design. Participants were asked to create a 1 minute pitch selected from a variety of topics and deliver it to the group.
Cicero
I used this off-the-shelf card-based system as the centerpiece for more advanced workshops where participants used the methodology to design the content, structure, and arguments for actual presentations they needed to deliver as part of their jobs.
Design Thinking & Innovation
While at Apple, I worked with colleagues to design and deliver a series of workshops intended to introduce and cultivate design thinking practices in several teams. These ranged from 1-hour overviews to familiarize participants with basic concepts, to several day sessions that deeply explored real problems in the business.
The sessions focused on hands-on practice and covered skills such as interviewing and observation techniques, brainstorming, prototyping, user testing, creative thinking, and more.
Writing Workshop
I developed and delivered the Writing workshop to help employees gain exposure to the brand’s voice and writing style.
Because the need for frequent training sessions in regional offices around the globe, the workshop was designed for virtual delivery from the ground up. The 1-hour workshop featured brief lecture sections, with interactive activities designed to help participants practice the concepts.
Jargon Cleaner followed a brief presentation on writing clearly and concisely. Participants used the annotation feature in Zoom to mark sections of the (terribly written) paragraph to identify words and phrases that should be changed or removed.
Get to the Essence was an interactive lecture activity that followed a several minute presentation on George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language. Participants were asked to take notes during the presentation, then summarize the main points in exactly 32 words and share in chat.
After discussing and reflecting on the submissions, they were directed to revise their summaries into 16 words, then 8, 4, and if time allowed eventually to 2 words. The goal was to allow participants to practice brevity in their writing, which we led into a discussion on self-editing strategies.
Courageous Conversations
I designed this workshop for a startup that required a deep-dive into communication skills, particularly for difficult and challenging topics. Courageous Conversations was 2+ hour in-person workshop with multiple activities, culminating in an opportunity for participants actively “design” a difficult conversation they were facing. The design featured semi-scripted role plays intended to give participants more context and guidance than is usual in most role playing activities, especially with less experienced learners.
