The path to flexible UX Designer

The path to flexibility in the UX workshop


During a workshop, we have all been confronted with a lack of motivation on the part of certain participants, the expression of negative emotions, the management of conflicts within teams. We have already heard:

"I don't have time for that","this workshop is going to be useless","anyway it's Paul's fault","this product really sucks","I do not know how to draw"

And that without forgetting more minor malfunctions such as delays, chatter, lack of participation, etc. So many factors that can make it (very) difficult to run your workshop.
What if we learned to reverse a limiting context into a favorable climate? Taking, The path of flexibility we will learn :.

  • Facing these different profiles
  • To rely on levers to guide, federate and achieve results despite a difficult start
  • To improve the difficult climates within a workshop

flexibility I explored techniques and dove into psychology and cognitive sciences with the aim of better understanding reactions and behaviors. Through this article, I share with you a personal reflection.

“You can learn more about someone in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. “

“Neuroscience helps us understand how we react to different types of situations. As such, they give us guidance on how to manage them. Thus, our nervous system, the brain, reacts very differently depending on whether the situation is simple and known or complex and unknown: it does not recruit the same circuits and does not deploy the same strategies. As a result, the way to ask questions, to exchange, to learn or to unlearn is not the same.” Dr. Jacques Fradin

What we can deduce from this is that our participants are certainly in an unknown situation for them and which can cause this destabilizing effect, the emotions vary according to each individual.

“Whether I'm a tennis player or a coach, when I'm taken at odds with my game, my strategy, my failure is less attributable to my skills than to my strategy. It is therefore essential not only to sharpen your skills, but also and above all to know how to use the right strategy at the right time.” Dr. Jacques Fradin

judo

The technique of judo: strategy of flexibility to reverse

(or jujitsu: ju = flexibility; jitsu = technical)
Since the 70s, two doctors, Michael APTER, Doctor of Psychology and Psychiatrist Ken SMITH have studied cognitive-behavioral issues, in particular to understand the levers of motivation. Their work led to the theory of motivation called “the theory of reversal”. They theorize that Man is both everything and his opposite, and that it is possible to move from one state to another quickly. Which means we can move from a problem approach to a solution approach easily.
Of course, the APTER® Method needs to be trained with an approved organization to be able to be really used. However, this theory teaches us above all that in the face of a negative spirit, we can change the situation, this implies having the right posture at the right time.

How to apply this strategy?

Step 1:
Starting from the observation that Man is inconsistent and changing.
Have confidence in yourself and keep in mind the objective of your workshop. We must leave with enough necessary information.
Step 2 :
Quickly identify negative emotions whether verbal or non-verbal (you have to be attentive enough).
Depending on the group, if you feel tension or annoyance, it will be good to purge the emotions. And some games and tricks can turn around a blocking situation.
Step 3 :
Prisoner
Thu 1 : The Prisoner's Game (5 minutes)
Le + of this game: it allows us to quickly analyze our group.
Distribute Post-its, explain the different attitudes and ask everyone to position themselves:

  • The Explorers (those who want to discover new things)
  • The Shopper (those who will take all possible information)
  • The Vacationers (those who are not really interested in the content of the workshop but rather happy to get out of their daily life)
  • The Prisoners (those who feel they have been forced to attend the workshop and think they have better things to do elsewhere)

Then collect the post-its and write the result on the board then start the discussion to improve the state of the “Prisoners”… even if the result remains anonymous, we quickly identify the “Prisoners” and can try to limit the state of negative spirit by remembering that the success of the workshop lies in collective intelligence, we can also more easily adapt our attitude to the different profiles.
boat
Thu 2 : The Speed ​​Boat (10 minutes)
Le + of this game: it allows you to defuse the bomb and gain height.
Originally this workshop was used as a retrospective, however I had the opportunity to test it at the beginning of the workshop to unlock a limiting situation.
If one of the participants speaks negatively at the start of the workshop:
Draw a boat on the board and calmly and sympathetically offer the person to write on a post-it what seems frustrating to them. Place the post-it on a wall symbolizing it as an “anchor”.
Then, suggest to the whole team to find “winds” (solutions) in a few minutes to allow this anchor to disappear or attenuate. The participant will feel considered and the tension will drop a notch.
Bringing empathy and using a little well-balanced humor is always welcome (it's really a very heavy anchor!). The metaphor makes it possible to gain height. The approach should always remain non-judgmental and solution-oriented.
board
Trick : The flipchart
Le + : it does not disturb the workshop but allows to free the speech and to attenuate any frustration.
Install a flipchart and establish a rule from the start so as not to encroach on the workshop: suggest that participants write down on post-its their questions, points of frustration or ideas related or not to the workshop and to stick on the paperboard whenever they want, so that they can come back to it at the end of the workshop. At the end of the workshop we can discuss with the group around these different points and answer questions that will have remained unanswered.
disorder

The Disorder Technique: A Strategy for Fostering Creativity

“Cognitive psychology has long demonstrated that our ability to process information in the short term is limited, if the field of possibilities is too large, we cannot consider it as a whole. It then seems natural that it is difficult to find a creative and original idea there.” Jules Zimmerman

The unexpected or the constraint can be a source of performance and creativity. The random, the unknown, are all disturbances that help us find solutions or ideas.
How to apply this strategy?
Step 1 :
Configure the room (if possible) using psychogeography, which is the art of using space to provide a supportive setting.
Examples of psychogeography to facilitate collaboration:
psychogeography
Step 2 :
Using serendipity and chaos to renew a situation that seems too passive or timid.
Enter into a break to break an atmosphere deemed harmful.
catapult
Game 1: Catapulted Ideas
Le + of this game: create a playful atmosphere and stimulate a group
Identify a problem for which we want to find solutions.
With the participants, formulate 3 questions around the issue from different angles.
Distribute sheets of different colors to each person and ask to write one question per sheet.
Give 1min30 to write the most ideas per sheet individually.
Then, ask to crumple the sheets into balls, then invite the participants to throw their balls in all directions while giving the signal: “catapult”.
Ask everyone to pick up 3 sheets then repeat as many times as necessary.
The climate will have become dynamic and playful and more full of ideas will have been obtained.
card
Tip: Special Cards
Le + of this game: being able to improvise and turn around easily
To create disorder, music composer Brian Eno, who has worked with the biggest rock bands, used to use a technique: he takes out a deck of cards and on each of them is written a special rule : “swap instruments”, “do something noisy”, “act unpredictably”…
We can consider creating our own maps in order to release them when necessary. The idea is to create very special rules to reverse a context and solicit creativity. I was able to experiment with this method with open questions that allow the participants to start thinking. Each group had interpreted the questions differently and the approach gave rise to a great deal of creativity.
Take away
Judo technique to smoothly reverse a situation:

  • Remember that Man is an emotional being (empathy must also be present during our workshops) and that his emotions vary constantly, which creates favorable ground for us to reverse a situation
  • Play on this observation to apply different games such as: the prisoner game, the speed boa gamet or the flipchart trick

Disorder technique to create a dynamic and creative climate:

  • Prepare your room with the technique of psychogeography (if we can)
  • Relaunch a dynamic either by physically activating our participants with the game of catapulted ideas, either leaving special cards which will launch collective reflections

Conclusion
To conclude, even if the neurosciences do not provide turnkey solutions to solve our problems, it allows us to better understand the mechanisms of our brain and therefore benefit from being experienced through cognitive psychology and our sessions of job.
I send you here some keys that have been useful to me to renew a situation. What is certain is that we cannot deny our role as facilitator and the capacity that we must have to orient our workshops according to our participants and the context. Understand the perception they have and adjust our position to take advantage of the best and achieve our goal.
To go deeper into the subject:
I invite you to read the article on the

 
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