The Design Gym’s Digital Studio is a virtual workshop (as in space to make things). It’s a place to bring your team(s) and get your digital hands dirty tackling priority business challenges with the guidance of our strategy facilitators.
What happens in the Digital Studio?
Your team (or a group of teams) comes together for a guided day of collaborative, accelerated work. We’ll align in advance on the brief and desired outcomes so that your team can focus during your time in the Studio.
Why bring your team to the Digital Studio?
- Expert Facilitation: Our team has years of experience leading kick-ass IRL and remote work sessions. We’ll take care of all the planning, prep, and day-of activity guidance.
- Focus: The Digital Studio frees your team up from planning and facilitation responsibilities so you can focus on what you do best: the work.
- Efficiency: The result of expert facilitation and deep focus is efficiency. Your team will get more done in 1-day than you might in an entire week, maybe even the whole month.
- Real Deliverables: You’ll leave the Studio with work to show for it; not just tell about it. You’ll make decisions and create tangible artifacts that move your project forward.
What will you work on in the Digital Studio?
There are two ways that teams collaborate together in the studio: Classic Sessions, which address common needs we regularly hear from team leaders, and Custom Sessions, which are tailored to your team’s specific goals. Join one or join ‘em all.
Classic Studio Sessions
We’ve designed 4 studios to align with common problems that teams face—ours included. Whether you’re identifying and prioritizing the right problem to solve, coming up with and testing creative solutions, or planning for what’s coming up ahead, these 1-day studio sessions are structured to help your team focus on doing the work in a more strategic and accelerated way.
The Problem Framing Studio
Get your team aligned with a design brief that has: “the big why” of the project, the constraints, success criteria, and high-level action planning.
The Problem Solving Studio
Generate dozens of ideas sparked by curated inspiration before prioritizing solutions that are creative and meet your business needs.
The Prototyping Studio
Think critically about the biggest risks in your solutions and build prototypes so you can gather feedback to move forward confidently.
The Future Planning Studio
Identify disruptive scenarios and prototype future states that consider alternative revenue models, customer segments, and operating principles.
Custom Studio Sessions
Tackle a priority project in the studio. We’ll align on your objectives for the studio session, and design an agenda with customized activities to achieve your desired outcomes. You pick the date(s); custom sessions are a flexible number of hours/days. Drop us a note to set up a 90-minute Scoping Session to plan your experience in the studio.
How are teams customizing the Digital Studio?
- A global CPG team is hosting a Studio Session for its regional teams. Following global strategy share outs, each team will break out to ideate on adapting for local markets.
- An innovation team at a Fortune 500 healthcare org is bringing 5 teams to work on 5 different priority challenges. It’s framed as an internal hack-a-thon day to solve problems via team building.
- A brand team customized a Problem Solving Studio to crank on 3 new opportunities. We’ll host their product, insights and tech teams for several ideation rounds in different breakouts to mix up the minds.
How do custom studio sessions work?
- Scoping Session: We’ll discuss your goals and desired outcomes so we can make a recommendation on what customized studio session will be best for your team.
- Design Brief: We’ll co-create a design brief to serve as the north star for the session.
- Customization: Our team of facilitators will customize an agenda and set of activities that is designed to achieve your specific objectives. We’ll review the game plan together prior to the session date.
- Pre-work: Depending on your objectives, there may be pre-reading or pre-work involved for the team (ie: immerse in background research, identify sources of inspiration, read customer stories, or do some solo ideation).
- Studio Session: On the day(s) of your studio session, the day will largely be spent in focused, facilitated working blocks with plenty of breaks to maintain energy throughout the day. We’ll close the day with a collective debrief and celebratory beer cheers!
- Debrief: Within 5 days following the session, you’ll get all of the completed deliverables, raw documentation, tools/templates, and shared inspiration from your team’s studio time, so that you can keep momentum going immediately. We’ll set-up time for a debrief discussion and coaching on next steps.
What past attendees are saying...
The Design Thinking Bootcamp was a highlight in my professional development in 2019. The boot camp had a perfect amount of classroom style learning, and hands on activities that kept the day engaging. I was able to walk away from the workshop with brainstorming activities to use with my team, and feel more confident when working in cross-functional team environment.
Ashley Wilson
Employee Program and Events Manager, MailchimpFacilitating Design Thinking is a hands-on, real-life, workshop that taught me a new way to see, listen and approach a challenge (or question) from an entirely new perspective. As a result, new ideas, opportunities and relationships have been opened up to our organization (and our customers!). This is a “must attend” for anyone looking for a new approach that can help their business or organization design something better for their end users.
Jeremy Haldeman
Director of Government Affairs and Advocacy, American Refugee CommitteeI've always felt ill-equipped to lead meetings and discussions, despite my management training and having received an MBA. So I was excited to take Facilitation Fundamentals and the workshop did not disappoint! Tim and Hannah covered a vast amount of information and kept energy levels high throughout the day. Tim and Hannah shared personal anecdotes, research-backed ideas, and modeled engaging facilitation. I walked away from the day with theoretical facilitation frameworks as well as practical tools to use.