When, Why, and How You Will Benefit From a Product Workshop

Working on UX and UI for mobile and web, we often found ourselves entangled in a web of client and user requirements. This included endless lists of unprioritized features, blurry goals, missed target users, and, worst of all, missed deadlines and exceeded budgets.

So we started detangling, reading, learning, and mapping out the solutions, going through many workshops ourselves. Finally, combining our experience and a few well-known methodologies, we came up with a solution that yielded the most effective results, and we’ve never looked back. We are currently working on several large-scope projects that started with these workshops, and we are happy with the outcome.

Who can benefit from Product workshops?

So far, 3 types of clients/projects have benefited significantly from our Product workshops. We are also happy to say that all the clients who went through workshops continued working successfully with our teams, even though it was never a prerequisite.

So, who are these workshops for?

1. Clients who know what they want to create but do not have a clear idea of how to do it and what should be involved in the project:

“I want to create an educational platform where children can watch videos, complete exercises, and their parents can track progress. It needs to be fun for kids and simple to use for parents.” (clear focus on the main goal; features not defined)

2. Clients who managed to establish a more clear idea of their project, but got stuck with too many ideas and features:

“I want to create an educational platform for children and their parents where they can watch videos, play mini-games together, and win tournaments. Parents can create lessons for their children with powerful video editing tools. And I have so many more ideas.” (no clear focus on main selling point; features well defined; possibly overthinking)

3. Clients who are planning for a large-scale project and need estimates of budget and deadlines, prioritization of work, and timelines:

“I need to create an educational platform for schools with a specific set of rules issued by the schools. Parents, children, school principals, and external advisors will use this platform. We have defined a flow for each.” (everything is defined and specified but lacks prioritization and the attack plan)

Usually, clients come to us with a vision and a head full of ideas. If these ideas aren’t streamlined and prioritized, we’re in for some unpleasant surprises along the way.

Remember that these are not Design Thinking workshops (although we can do those too). We combined several methodologies, such as design thinking and lean UX, with different experiences from our team members. So this is something that we’ve had a lot of experience with, and we’ve managed to find the sweet spot and make it work.

How does a product discovery workshop look like?

As you can see, these workshops will help both our clients and our team establish expectations from the project and the people involved. This is why it is vital that we meet each other and that we all get familiar with the project.

team of 5 sitting around a table in a meeting room

Who should participate in the workshop?

From your team, those should be the people who are most familiar with the idea and vision of your project and who will be involved in the execution. Our team provides a facilitator who will guide everyone through the process. Additionally, our senior UX/UI designers will be responsible for the project, and a senior developer will advise on the technical aspects of requirements and features.

You can also let us know if you feel that some people from your team should only be included in some parts of the workshops. However, if the workshops are longer than one session, at least one of your team members from the previous session must be present.

How long does a workshop last?

Our practice is that the workshops last around 4 hours. It is really hard to keep the teams focused and concentrated for longer than this. This is why we advise spreading the workshop to more than 1 session if it takes more than 4-5 hours.

an abstract graphic of a hand taking out portions of the clock

What is the workshop agenda?

Every workshop is different, and our facilitator will prepare it depending on the client and project. As we mentioned earlier, clients have different needs depending on the project’s scope or how defined their vision is. Because of this, a one-size-fits-all solution does not work here.

What’s the output of the workshop?

After the workshop, we will prepare a document with everything you need to start working on your project immediately. Depending on the workshop’s objective, you will have a project roadmap. This may include the main goals the product needs to achieve, defined target users, MVP definition, or prioritized features. Just like we customize the workshop to your needs, so is the output document. We will determine the output list during the process. Once we prepare this document, it becomes valuable input for any design and development team. This allows them to start the development immediately.

Why attend a Product workshop?

Discovery is an essential phase of the product development process. Our team can carry out smaller projects independently via email exchanges or kick-off meetings. However, this approach can lead to many wasted hours and misunderstandings for more complex projects. The workshop helps clients and the team set the right expectations by going deeper into the idea, better understanding the goals, and predicting and defining possible obstacles.

It may seem like this process takes up much time, but it’s an investment. In the long run, it saves you resources and nerves. With the established roadmap, we can predict a realistic timeline. This allows our clients to plan their budgets and stay aware of the progress.

Final thoughts

Our team is ready to answer any of your questions, so feel free to reach out anytime. While you’re processing all the information about the workshops, you can look at the projects we were lucky to work on so far. We’ll be happy to get the chance to add yours to this list one day.

Written by Marija Jamandilovski (UX and content writer)