Design Sprints + Workshop Facilitation

Sometimes you need to take a step back and allow someone outside your organization to lead you through a journey of exploration. Bringing in a fresh pair of eyes and ears can introduce new points of view and enable a team to solve a design problem in a new way. The best approach is to keep an open mind and beginner’s mindset. Learn more about Innovation Design Sprints

Allowing yourself to not define the outcome in advance can enable you to:

Go deeper into the problem space

Explore alternative points-of-view

Try different techniques

Cultivate greater levels of empathy

Accomplish more in less time

Bringing in an external facilitator to lead a workshop or design sprint is more affordable than you might assume. Jess has rates to suit just about any size company and does pro bono work for special interest projects and social good companies.

Ask about Sprints + Workshops

Design Sprints + Workshop Facilitation

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Sprinting for Change

Are you ready to enhance your design practice?

Exploration x Design coaches you to design your next big thing. We’ve developed a unique sprint process that utilizes the methodologies of design thinking to uncover new innovative opportunities. Design thinking is an incredible methodology that helps us bake research and evaluation into the iterative design process. This means we can design a practice that enables us to work more efficiently while designing better solutions.

We're different from other creative consultancies because we work with you as a trainer. Our goal is to help you develop and enhance your design skills to strengthen your design practice. We can work on real projects with you or create practice workshops that allow you to practice new methodologies you don’t get to practice in your current project work.

We like to think of yoga or training for a long distance run as metaphors for our philosophy towards design. If you think about yoga or running as something you do it can feel more like a chore or something to check off a list. But when you adopt the perspective that yoga or running is a daily practice you start to open up your mind to yoga or running as something to explore.

Design isn’t just something you do. Design is a skill you practice.

Exploration x Design was founded on the notion that everything is design. From our corporate culture to our delivery process - everything in our lives is designed. But it’s not always designed mindfully. Design thinking requires a culture change to approach the creative process in a way that includes everyone - from your marketing team to your stakeholders and end-users. This collaborative process helps us design more mindfully by bringing in a mix of experiences and perspectives.

What are your biggest challenges this year?

You know you’re creatively “stuck” when you’re seeking inspiration from your competitors. XYZ company has a whiz shiz - and so should you! So a team is put together whether internally or externally to develop your company’s version of someone else’s solution. And the process is replicated throughout the year to keep up with what is perceived as innovation.

Innovation is not about copying what someone else is doing. Innovation is about figuring out what you are uniquely positioned to do based on real problems that need a solution. And the term “problem” can be a spectrum of opportunities - on one extreme you have your wicked problems and on the other end are needs no one has anticipated yet.

What do you want to accomplish in the next six months?

Are you part of a product or service team focused on delivering new features? Are you focused on figuring out what the future looks like for your company? Are you curious about the third wave of technology and what it means for your technical infrastructure?

We are so focused on delivering that sometimes we don’t spend the time we need to work on our internal processes. Especially when companies are trying something new - we can skimp on team alignment, hold superficial debriefs and miss out on opportunities for internal reflection.

Exploration x Design is your design coach. Our mission is to help you achieve your business goals through the practice of design thinking. We work with you in a series of sprints to explore design thinking; in order to, efficiently design products, services, processes and policies.

Our sprints are designed to allow you to practice design in new ways that elevate your work and enhance your skills. Continuous learning is fun and inspiring. Our goal is for you to feel masterful and confident.

1-Day Team Transformation Workshop

The goal for this one-day workshop is to address common dysfunctions to ensure your team avoids the following:

The first hour is a warm-up and prep for the types of collaborative activities occurring throughout the day. It helps ensure everyone in the room is well acquainted and trust has started to be cultivated.

The first activity challenges the group to generate ideas and feelings about the future. The first step will be to generate ideas about the worst possible outcomes and work to align on a shared agreement of what the group doesn’t want to experience by “affinitizing” post-its into themes and then turning themes into insights.

Based on the insights from the data mining activity the group will form teams to challenge themselves to reframe what they know they don’t want to experience into positive outcomes. Teams will dot vote on their reframed statements to determine what they feel most strongly represents their expectations.

Once reframed statements are finalized the teams will work to generate ideas for implementing ways of experiencing their expectations.

Would you like to learn more about team transformation? Send an email to sales@exploration.design

3-Day Design Innovation Sprint

Are you interested to enhance your design practice?

Exploration x Design has created a unique 3-Day Design Innovation Sprint to help take your skills to the next level. We use Design Thinking methodologies and combine them with the sprint framework to create a custom program tailored to your needs.

It doesn't matter if you're entirely new to design or a seasoned practitioner, we all need time to practice and advance our skills.

Whether you want to practice using an existing project or practice with a hypothetical future solution; we bring in the right experts to coach you to achieve your goals.

Think of us like your personal trainer at the gym. We help you go beyond what you might do on your own. It's highly motivating to have someone push you and setup new activiites for you to try.

Wondering how this works?

Step 1

We meet with you (and potentially your team members) for a free no obligation consultation. We talk to you about your goals, challenges, ambitions and past experiences.

Step 2

We use the information you provide to create a custom 3-Day Design Innovation program that enables us to expand your design thinking proficiencies.

What's in the 3-Day Design Innovation Sprint?

Day 1 : Define the Problem

Establish a problem statement based on your goals for the sprint. Collaboratively decide the specific focus area for the next three days.

Gather information related to the problem space. Sometimes this involves interviewing end-users or stakeholders. Sometimes we might invite subject matter experts to provide supportive information. We might conduct discover interviews or deploy other activities to gather the information we need.

At the end of the day we synthesize our findings and generate insights.

Day 2 : Ideate Concepts

Using our findings we begin the fun process of ideation. We use a mix of activities to think beyond our current capabilities or limitations. We play in our creative space to discover new ideas and challenge ourselves in new ways.

At the end of the day we bring in our end-users, stakeholders or subject matter experts to share feedback and test our ideas.

Day 3 : Prototype Solutions

On our final day we prototype using alternative materials to challenge ourselves to design in new ways. We iterate on our concepts until we reach a point where we feel ready to gather feedback from our end-users, stakeholders and subject-matter experts.