How to Run a Remote Vision Workshop

Conducting UX workshops in perfectly normal office conditions has its challenges: the host must coordinate participant schedules, determine the organization and format of the meeting, present with optimal clarity, and ultimately craft a shared vision with the team. But as remote work becomes increasingly popular, UX teams face the challenge of pulling off this same complex process without the benefit of face-to-face interaction.

In this article I’ll share with you how I recently conducted a fully remote vision workshop using an online tool called Miro. I will include a step-by-step breakdown of how I prepared, what our first attempt looked like, and what I learned from our first virtual workshop.

Before the Workshop

Determine the workshop goal

Ours was to create a vision statement for our product that would project up to five years in the future and align the team and business stakeholders to the product’s purpose. We were able to describe the value of a vision statement and how it would be a foundational step on the way to a prioritized product roadmap. These tangibles of how the workshop would convert into real value helped convince our internal partners that a vision workshop would be well worth the company's time and efforts.

Outline an agenda for the workshop

Because we wanted the workshop to represent diverse perspectives, we knew we would need more than just designers on board. We wrote a basic outline to pitch the idea of the workshop to internal partners as well. Our outline included what would become the content of the presentation and provided a definition of vision, examples of vision statements, and steps of activities we planned to use with an online collaboration tool called Miro. Using that tool, we would conduct a virtual whiteboarding session as a way to brainstorm and gather the content of our product’s vision statement.

Determine who needs to be present

Virtual meetings have the potential to get crowded, which can limit and complicate people’s ability to contribute. With that in mind, we invited only those who could contribute most valuably to the conversation and would be personally invested in its outcome. We selected the core members of our product team: Engineering Manager, Design Lead, Product Owner, and Scrum Master.

We also considered inviting company stakeholders, senior leadership, and members of our product, development, design, sales and marketing teams. We ended up choosing many product owners as well as a few folks from design to compliment our core team. For your meeting, decide which participants will provide a well-rounded vision outcome.

Pitch the idea to partners

Some organizations may have a UX-centered culture where the idea of a vision workshop to align priorities and vision for the future is a given -- That just isn’t the case in our company (yet!). For us, the best way to gain approval for a vision workshop was to partner with an influential member of the product organization, sell them on the value, and ask them to leverage their positions to convince others to attend. Our product owner partner helped us get the meeting on everyone’s calendar and generously secured us a two-and-a-half hour time block.

Lay the “virtual” foundation

We finished our presentation material and secured a virtual board in our product design team’s Miro workspace for the vision workshop. We invited all the workshop participants to join Miro well in advance of the meeting to give them time to familiarize themselves with the platform. We set up a rectangle of space for each person on our virtual board, writing their name and assigning them a unique color of sticky notes to give them a sense of ownership and a place to personally contribute.

Practice and prepare

Do a run-through (or two… or three...) of the presentation and all activities to make sure they work and run as expected. Especially for remote workshops when the logistics are trickier, rehearsing the presentation allows you to catch details that could cause confusion or stress for an attendee. Also, I would highly recommend having a co-host. Having a partner ensures smoother performance, relieves the amount of pressure, and instantly establishes a tone of cooperation and teamwork. 

That being said, you and your co-host will need to decide on and practice your respective roles: Who will keep time? Who will be the MC? Who will troubleshoot questions? Should one of you participate to model the behavior you are looking for? Who will recap next steps before everyone leaves the meeting? This will offer the meeting a sense of balance for both hosts and provide a smoother, more controlled presentation for all participants.

Get the workshop on everyone’s calendars

Send out a meeting invitation, and include a high-level agenda to all participants in advance. We sent ours approximately two weeks before our meeting to make sure everyone could attend the two-and-a-half-hour time block. The Friday before our workshop, which was set for the following Tuesday, I sent an email to the participants encouraging everyone to look for their invitation to Miro and to practice logging in before the workshop. I also advised that they use Google Chrome and, if possible, to have access to two monitors during the workshop: one to follow along with the group and one to focus on their individual contributions. The day-of, I sent a similar email setting the tone that we were looking forward to the session and deeply thankful for their willingness to participate.

During the Workshop

Kick off your presentation

We thanked everyone for coming and for setting aside so much time. We also recorded our meeting. I had hesitations about this at first, but with a remote workshop it can be easy for your attention to drift, and you’ll want to make sure you don't miss anything, especially as the facilitator. We were pleased to find that being recorded didn’t detract from anyone’s participation or honest evaluation of the content we presented or the activity we took them through. Read through the agenda to set expectations for the session, and give people time to ask questions before you dive in. It is a good thing to get confusion, concerns, and doubts out on the table at the beginning to ensure that participants feel taken care of and are then able to focus on the key points of the presentation.

Start with a warm-up activity

The presentation we created included the context of what a vision statement was; how vision, mission, and values differ; examples of vision statements from businesses we admire; and a warm-up activity to get folks brainstorming. (We decided to ask what Amazon’s vision statement might be, with really insightful results). We also included information about our business priorities and what we know about our users. For those two parts of the session we allowed time for evaluation and feedback from our participants, inquiring as to whether our business priorities or user personas had changed.

Begin your virtual sticky note brainstorm

As we made the transition from the information portion of the workshop to the participation portion, we took the opportunity to reset expectations and dispel worry. We allowed time for everyone to experiment with the tool (Miro) in case they hadn’t had time to prior to the meeting. We gave a demo and shared useful keyboard shortcuts. We also allowed more space for questions.  

Once everyone was situated we covered the agenda and explained the rules: 1) there are no bad ideas, and 2) everyone participates.

Miro Activity Part 1: Fill out sticky notes

We read the focus questions from the center of the board, which the participants would use to brainstorm answers. They had 20 minutes to fill out sticky notes on the “what, who, how, and why” of the product. We decided to have one facilitator participate and the other maintain control over the logistics. As the participating facilitator, I wrote my ideas in a Word document ahead of the workshop, then filled in my sticky notes quickly once we started so I could be available to help others troubleshoot. My co-host was the governing facilitator and announced the time in five-minute intervals so that everyone could stay on target.

MIRO Activity Part 2: Share and cluster sticky notes

We gave everyone approximately 5 minutes to read their sticky notes for each category and cut and paste or drag them into the matching area in the center of the board for the product’s “what, who, how, and why.” I shared my sticky notes first to model the expectations and so that I would be free to begin clustering the stickies. It took longer than I thought it would to begin affinity mapping the sticky notes while I was trying to listen and absorb the information others were sharing at the same time. For that reason, we instituted a spontaneous break that allowed me time to organize the information properly and gave everyone an opportunity to step away and refresh before continuing. I would recommend building a break into your flow, it was incredibly beneficial for our workshop and our participants.

Miro Activity Part 3: Dot vote on clusters 

After we returned, it was time to vote. Each person had four dots, and we asked them to vote (place a dot) next to the heading of what they believed to be the strongest cluster of stickies in each category. Since we still had extra time, we allowed our intuition to intervene again and asked everyone to go around and explain their selections, which provided valuable insight into each participant’s thought process.

Thank you and next steps 

At the end, we celebrated having gotten through the workshop successfully and emerged with valuable information. We made sure to thank everyone for their time and let them know what the next steps would be.

After the Workshop

Follow-up email with feedback form

Within the next couple days (give some time for the dust to settle), send another email to the group thanking them again and including a link to offer feedback on the experience. We used a Google Form and followed the 4L’s Format: What did you like? What did you learn? What was lacking? What did you long for? We also had them rate their experience from extremely satisfied to extremely dissatisfied with room for further explanation, which allowed us to gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback.

Affinity map the feedback

My vision workshop co-host and I got together for a few hours to affinity map the results and create the vision statement (see below). First, we validated the clustered groups of sticky notes from the session and finessed small details. Next, we took the titles of the clusters, put them on their own sticky notes, and grouped and titled them again. We repeated this process until we reached the highest level of information. After digesting the information and feedback resulting from the session, we set off to independently write as many vision statements as we could in about 10 minutes. Then we converged, picking the best parts of all our versions and consolidating them into one well-worded and well-rounded vision statement. We had collected so much information that we used the highest level titles of groupings from the affinity mapping to inform product values (complete with descriptions) as a bonus outcome of the workshop.

Create a deliverable 

The workshop generated so much information that we were able to create a vision statement for our product and an additional set of eight product values. We created a PDF deliverable with the vision statement and values and shared it with the participants of the vision workshop. This deliverable served as concrete evidence that their time and contributions had been valuable and had directly led to the accomplishment of the workshop’s mission.

Conclusion

We received tons of positive feedback. Conducting a vision workshop for our team and co-creating a vision statement for our product was a huge win for our company. There are many helpful resources online if you need inspiration for your vision workshop content. In an organization that is hungry for clarity, UX Designers can help provide information that clears up a direction and builds confidence and a more united sense of purpose. I encourage you to find ways to practice UX leadership skills in vision workshops whenever it makes sense for your team or organization.