Library of facilitation techniques

Use this method if you would like to show the participants the importance of collaboration, team strategy and team effectiveness.

One at a time, people add to create a moving, noise-making machine. 

You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference. 

15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change. 

With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

Create the best prototypes by turning up the competition.

Sometimes it's the thrill of competition that unlocks genius in rapid prototyping. Gather some of your colleagues, set some ground rules, and go for the gold.

The Portrait Gallery is an energetic and fun icebreaker game that gets participants interacting by having the group collaboratively draw portraits of each member. The activity builds a sense of group because it results with each participant having a portrait drawn of him/herself by the other members of the group together. It also has a very colourful visual outcome: the set of portraits which can be posted in the space.

To become aware of how you, as an individual, make decisions with the team

This exercise supports a user-centred approach to product and service innovation. Teams create an imaginary user (a persona), map out an average day in his or her life, and identify the challenges that he or she experiences. Teams then use this to brainstorm new products or services that could help with those challenges. Finally, sketches or prototypes of the best ideas are quickly developed presented back to for feedback.

At IDEO.org we have seven little rules that unlock the creative power of a brainstorming session.

You can enable a large group of people to connect with a leader or an expert (the celebrity) as a person and grasp the nuances of how that person is approaching a challenge. With a well-designed interview, you can turn what would otherwise be a passive, often boring presentation into a personal narrative that is entertaining, imparts valuable knowledge, and reveals the full range of rational, emotional, and ethical/moral dynamics at play. You can often turn the interview into an invitation to action, drawing out all the elements needed to spark the participant group’s imagination and encourage cohesive action.

This session is for members of a team to learn from their experiences on a project, to support each other to improve, and to bring closure to the team. They start by drawing out the high and low points of the project, and use these to move into a discussion about what they have learned. They define some actions that they are going to take into future projects, and support each other by giving feedback to improve their practice.

An emotional journey is a visualization that maps and illustrates a user’s emotional experience through the experience of interacting with an organization, product or brand.

A concept sketch is a fast freehand drawing.

To be used in Ideation phase.