As a client services agency, it's our job to help clients articulate their needs and to define solutions that meet those needs. Facilitation plays a key role in that process, providing a framework for gathering the right information and generating a variety of ideas, leading to the best work.
Facilitating Great Design
by Kevin Hoffman via A List Apart
Great web design is perceived as appropriate and enjoyable by users and clients alike. To get there, you have to have a process. To build consensus about where that process should go, you have to facilitate understanding of the myriad overlaps between business and user needs, art direction and brand, and innovation and ease-of-use. Great design is facilitating these forces.
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How to Run Meetings That Don’t Suck
by Mike Jongbloet via UX Booth
The job of a designer isn’t just about hex codes and pixels. Designers’ skillsets include working with stakeholders, generating ideas, working within constraints and visualizing solutions. These skills can be used to transform disengaged employees into engaged participants focused on an outcome. Meetings provide a fantastic opportunity for designers to develop professionally by applying skills they already have.
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How to Facilitate Meetings Like a Pro
by Eric Cipra via Medium
One of the most crucial roles you’ll have as a facilitator is to keep the meeting moving forward. If left to their own devices, groups of people tend to (a) talk way too much, wandering into so many overlapping tangents you’ll feel sure you’re in the movie Inception and the dream will collapse at any moment, or (b) not talk at all, sitting quietly and staring blankly while all of your prompts go un-heeded.
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Becoming a Better Facilitator
by Brian Frank via Smashing Magazine
Without a facilitator, collaborative environments are susceptible to something called the bystander effect. Imagine coming across a crowd of people watching a garbage fire in the middle of the street on a nice summer afternoon. “Huh, this is so weird,” everyone thinks to themselves. “One of these people must have it under control.” It’s natural to assume that someone in that crowd must have either started the fire for a good reason or called the fire department. But everyone is thinking the same thing. Nobody’s really in control or taking initiative. That’s the bystander effect.
Join us in Durham on August 17th as Panels & Pilsners returns to discuss the screenless future.
Panels & Pilsners brings together diverse minds and backgrounds in a casual atmosphere to discuss topics related to strategy, design, and technology.
