One of the most powerful but often overlooked aspects of hosting a workshop is the instant community that is built. As designers and facilitators, it is essential to create the conditions that allow that community to come to fruition. Last month, in our workshop Make Waves: Exploring the Challenges of Women in Tech, we wanted to bring together women of different ages, experiences, and occupations to grapple with this topic. Our goal was to generate solutions to these challenges. Now, however, what I realized is that ultimately, the building of an instant community turned out to be a surprising and valuable outcome of the day.
The seeds of this workshop were planted when Pronita Mehrotra and I first met. I reached out to Pronita after reading a thoughtful and insightful article she wrote. We decided to collaborate and to learn more by reaching out to women in our network who worked in the field of technology and asking if we might conduct interviews about their experiences. All the women we asked were eager to talk to us and share their stories, which we were very grateful to hear. We decided the next step would be to create a workshop leveraging the power of design. Andrea Anderson from Guidewire Software was a big supporter of our project and graciously offered to be our host.
And so we began to plan the details. First, we created personas that encapsulated aspects of the interviews we’d heard and research information on the topic of women in technology. We created Empathy Boxes that contained written profiles about each persona. We included information about education, college, interests, and challenges in the workplace. We also placed artifacts such as ticket stubs, sheet music, college mascots, golf balls, links to research, and an assortment of magazines and podcasts in each box. Our goal in creating Empathy Boxes was to make the personas come alive.
We then created a series of “How Might We?” questions that we would give to each group to seed their brainstorming and prototyping. These were:
- How might we ensure that a young woman’s first experience at a large technology company is one where she can thrive both personally and professionally?
- How might we ensure that women’s voices are heard regardless of how little or how much they speak in team meetings?’
- How might we ensure that women can both lead and be likeable?
Once we had prepared our materials and designed the agenda, we sent out invites to a diverse group of women that included executives, managers and students from Design Tech High School. We wanted the room to be filled with women who could share their experiences, their challenges, and their hopes and dreams.
On the actual day of our workshop, music from a curated playlist filled the room, the smell of coffee invited people in, and an assortment of colorful and surprising prototyping materials were set up around the room. And we set to work. We threaded improv exercises throughout the session, as we wanted everyone to discover what they had in common, collaborate as they envisioned imaginary trips together, and use their hands to build concrete prototypes of the solutions they created.
The prototypes the teams designed were thoughtful and innovative. They were built by a melding of empathy for the persona stories and shaped by the women’s real world lived experiences. A panel of judges from Guidewire and Oracle gave insightful and practical feedback as they heard each presentation.
As we closed the workshop, we invited everyone to reflect on what they learned by passing a long-tailed Koosh ball around our closing circle and using the prompts, “I liked and “I learned.” There was a sense of gratitude and joy that permeated the room during the final reflection.
What we learned was that this can only happen when we come to know each other, trust each other, and feel a sense of belonging and purpose. It seemed as though we had, in fact, created an instant community. And one that we hope will keep growing as we walk out the door.
