In this blog post, Louis Bennett, a product designer at FutureLearn, explains how we’ve been running asynchronous workshops.

Like many product teams now working remotely, we have found ourselves having to adapt to different ways of working. With flexible hours, Zoom fatigue and the technical issues of working from home, it can be hard to find the time to come together as a team and workshop on a problem.

A recent team retrospective highlighted the need to find better ways to adapt collaboration sessions to a more remote-friendly style that was less focused on the traditional idea of a ‘meeting’.

The design team had recently run an experiment to trial an asynchronous workshop, so we decided to adapt it to a product team and give it a go. It was a big success, allowing us to contribute in a meaningful way while being respectful of one another’s time.

What is an async workshop?

So what is different in an asynchronous workshop? It’s a self-guided workshop that lets members of the team participate when they have the time during the day (although this can be longer if needs be).

We start the day off by framing the problem, giving the team the resources they need and then letting them go and complete the workshop in their own time.

This gives team members the time to understand the problem and think about ideas in their own time. This reduces the pressure on having to produce ideas within a half an hour period, which can be a daunting task for people who aren’t usually as involved in the creative process.

Outcomes of the workshop (what went well/what didn’t?)

We got so many ideas — far more than usual! Letting team members take the time to get their head around the problem and revisit when they had more ideas over the day increased engagement in the workshop. The feedback from the team was also really positive and we agreed to do more of these in the future.

However, with more ideas came a larger editing process. Once we met back up as a team the following day, it soon became clear that it was going to be more challenging to group the ideas. We came up with a few solutions as a team on how we can run these sessions better and want to share those tips with you below.

5 tips on how to run an async workshop

So hopefully this inspires you to run your own asynchronous workshop. Here are my top 5 tips on how to turn your next workshop into one:

1. Have a clear agenda and provide resources for people to follow and use.
2. If you’re running the workshop, contribute some ideas early on. No one likes looking at a blank page.
3. Set out clear timeframes and expectations from the workshop.
4. Some people still want to collaborate in real-time, so hold drop-in sessions throughout the day(s).
5. Set a limit to the number of ideas people can contribute, this helps with the editing process later on.

Asynchronous workshops are now growing and continuing to be used across FutureLearn (most recently used by the leadership team). Below I’ve included a link to a template for you to use in your upcoming asynchronous workshops!

Link to miro template and image

If you decide to give an asynchronous workshop a go I’d love to hear from you and how you got on! Have you run one before and think we missed something? Let us know so we can continue to make these bigger and better.

If you’re interested in working at FutureLearn, we’re hiring! Please take a look at our Careers page to see our available roles.