Start Your Project With an Innovation Workshop

One of the best parts of my job is talking with prospective clients because of the incredible variety of business problems, ideas, and possibilities that come along with the conversation. Not all of the ideas we unpack are fully baked. But it might surprise you that we think this is actually an excellent place to start the conversation. 

Traditional RFPs, expensive pitches, and long proposals are not the most effective ways to explore an agency partnership. The best way to get a feel for what it’s like to work together is… to actually do some work together.

That’s why we developed our innovation workshop offerings: to help prospective clients effectively frame their challenges, define project scope, and create buy-in for new initiatives. It’s a simple proposition: both teams invest a small amount of time to explore a real problem within an established framework, led by expert practitioners. At the end of the workshop, they have a real deliverable they can use to advance their project—whether that’s in partnership with us or another team. 

We currently offer four workshops across different disciplines, which I’ll outline below. 

Research Planning Workshop

This workshop is designed to help clients explore how user research could support current or upcoming work. It’s most successful when clients have ideas about new priorities and are excited about conducting user research, but aren’t sure what’s involved in planning and executing that type of work. 

During the workshop, we identify and discuss research questions, appropriate methodologies, participant sourcing, and project logistics and expenses. By the end of the conversation, clients are equipped with expert recommendations for tackling their user research project and can use the information to pursue approval for the initiative, or to kick off a well-defined project with the Viget team. 

• Client commitment: 30-60 minutes of prep, 60-90 minutes for the workshop.
• Output: call recording and/or project brief (e.g., potential research questions, methodologies, hypotheses, participant sourcing criteria and options, project logistics and costs).

MVP Planning Workshop

This workshop is intended to establish a core set of features and user stories for an MVP product. It’s most effective when the client team has a strong sense of the overall product vision but needs help listing, unpacking, and/or prioritizing MVP features. 

Before the workshop, we’ll set up a board in Whimsical where we aggregate the high-level user stories and features that have already been shared. At the start of the session, we’ll briefly describe Viget’s approach to software development and confirm our high-level understanding of the product before diving into specific user stories and features. We have two major goals for this part of the process: 

1. Unpack features/functionality that are implied by the product vision but not fully understood or defined. 
2. Prioritize features into three buckets: Now, Next, and Later (or MVP, V1, V2). 

By the end of the workshop, we’ll all be in a better position to identify next steps and prepare estimates for the timeline and cost associated with the MVP features that we’ve identified together. 

• Client time commitment: 1 hour of prep, 1-2 hours for the workshop.
• Output: call recording and feature roadmap. 

UX Workshop

This workshop helps prospective clients assess their existing website’s accessibility and user experience and learn more about best practices for UX strategy. It’s most effective when the client team realizes that their current site needs improvement, but they aren’t sure how to plan and budget for an improvement project.

The workshop includes: 

1. An assessment survey, completed in advance
2. A live, heuristic assessment of the website user experience
3. An accessibility audit and recommendations for improvement
4. A discussion of best practices, high-priority improvements, and the associated level of effort to make changes. 

By the end of the workshop, client teams will be equipped to lead an internal discussion about high-priority opportunities to improve their website and be able to help guide planning and investment for a future project. 

• Client time commitment: 1 hour for the assessment survey, 1.5 hour workshop. 
• Output: call recording, survey results, and workshop deck.

Creative Ideation Workshop

This workshop is designed to visualize big picture ideas for new digital initiatives. The ideal use case is when a product owner or founder needs help getting buy-in or funding to realize their ultimate vision. 

The workshop typically involves: 

1. An initial call to discuss a variety of big ideas that have potential and need buy-in or funding to advance.
2. A Viget team sketching session to visualize potential solutions. 
3. A share-out meeting to reconvene with the client and discuss what we’ve produced. 

These workshops are my personal favorite to help facilitate. Past examples have included a home configurator application for Alarm.com, fan engagement ideas for the Denver Broncos, and customer experience concepts for Lyft.

• Client time commitment: 1 hour of prep, 1 hour initial call, 1 hour review call.
• Output: deck with original sketches or mock-ups.

Do any of these workshops sound like a match for your next big challenge? Get in touch with questions or an idea and we’ll get to work!