Library of facilitation techniques

A tool that helps a designer assess the demands a product/design puts on the user. This tool can be used by anyone creating a product, design, or service and wants to critically assess its demand on users.

Campfire leverages our natural storytelling tendencies by giving players a format and a space in which to share work stories—of trial and error, failure and success, competition, diplomacy, and teamwork. Campfire is useful not only because it acts as an informal training game, but also because it reveals commonalities in employee perception and experience.

Practice deeper listening and empathy by experiencing the same stimulus from two perspectives. Partners sit back-to-back and first listen individually to a short piece of music, noticing their internal experience through body, emotions, and thoughts.

They then describe their experience to each other in detail before listening again — this time through the lens of their partner’s description. By shifting from “my experience” to “your experience,” participants practice perspective-taking, empathy, and disciplined attention.

This simple structure builds the micro-behaviors that strengthen understanding, improve collaboration, and enhance the quality of insight gathered from others.

This circle exercise is simple, but challenging and very effective for generating focus and alignment in a group. Participants stand in a circle and send a clap around the circle. Each clap involves two members of the group clapping their hands at the same time. The group tries to move the clap around the circle faster and faster with as much synchronization as possible. The exercise gets even more challenging when the “double clap” is introduced and the clap can change direction.

A fast, virtual icebreaker designed for participants to get to know each other and have fun!

In pairs, each person gives a "magical" gift to their partner that relates to what their partner has shared with them. 

Year Compass is a very well-designed self-reflection and planning tool that helps teams and individuals to review the past year with mindfulness and intention, and set meaningful goals for the year ahead.

One of the best ways to explore creativity is through building. Simple low fidelity prototypes can allow us to transform simple (and at times complex) ideas into something physical. In doing so we inevitably open a space for continuing to explore, reevaluate and iterate.

Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

One, Two, And More is a flexible structured sharing activity for exploring different topics using different sets of questions. A unique feature of this activity is answering each question in three different modes: individual, pairs, and in teams.

Arguments, presentations, strategies, or other plans are sent to other teams for deconstruction in order to find gaps or problems.