Thursday, 7.30pm

“Thank God tomorrow is a holiday!” — Beta saying this to me was the third cue we were burned out. The first one was skipping lunch for four days in a row. The second was working 9+ hours every day.

Doing workshops remotely can take its toll. Here are ten ways to make it easier for yourself, inspired by personal experience. We learned this the hard way so you don’t have to.

Let’s say the client forwards you two years’ worth of customer research. Don’t get yourself in this situation. Clients believe that “everything is there; you just need to read it through.” We tried to read AND understand it all —  mission impossible. Unlike the client, we (and you probably) don’t have the business knowledge to guide us to insights. 

What to do? Send the client a structured checklist (feel free to use ours) and tell them they should make a presentation deck that answers all those questions. Tell them to be brief and keep it visually simple.

In workshops, you need to be able to rely on your partner and be ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. Study the workshop exercises, get to know their flow and goal. Make sure both team members leading the workshop know all the planned exercises.

Prevent exhaustion by switching between the role of the moderator and that of the facilitator. The moderator is the one talking, leading the exercise, and encouraging participants to, well… participate. The facilitator’s role is not that prominent. They need to keep tabs on the discussion, note anything important, and possibly prepare the materials for the next exercise.

Switching between roles will keep you fresh for exercises you’re moderating by giving you time to charge your batteries when you’re facilitating.

(Wo)man plans, God laughs. Well, design Gods must have had a wonderful time with our workshop. The client’s team couldn’t open Figma or Zoom due to IT security restrictions. Cue panic attack. We googled solutions on-site in real-time. Panic keystrokes led to these discoveries.

Zoom alternatives: Whereby (no install needed, our favorite), Jitsi, Meetup (G Suite)
Figma alternatives: Miro, Jamboard (G Suite), mural.co

How did it go? They all used Zoom on their iPads. We couldn’t solve the problem with Figma, so we gave them “pen-paper-photo” homework. It even helped the participants get more creative. Sometimes it pays off to go analog.

I (Beta) lived 300 m (less than 1000 feet) from my high school. Do you know who was always five minutes late for class? My friend Josephine. She lived 200 m from school. And I, of course. Remote workshops are always “one click away,” meaning people will postpone getting there until they’re late. It happened on 7/7 days of our workshop.

Shuffle exercises or skip them if you already got that insight. And for each day, plan a 30-minute buffer. Focus on the main problems you are trying to solve rather than covering everything. If you get the core things right, everything else will fall into place. Prepare “nice to have” exercises (like tone and voice) in case you have some extra time.

As you probably know, participants aren’t that pumped at the beginning of in-person workshops – and even less so when it comes to remote workshops. How to tackle that?

Do what you would normally do. Have an ice-breaking activity, just a digital one. In our case, we asked participants to write down their three favorite dishes on post-its and move them into the correct cuisine rectangle. The topic will spark some jokes and most importantly, raise everyone’s spirits. All the while they’ll learn how to duplicate post-its, write on them and move them around the board. Win-win.

Have you ever watched sports on mute? It’s boring. It’s the commentator that gets you immersed. Utilize that in your remote workshops. For the first three activities, we needed hydraulics just to get a “yes/no” out of participants. 

Then it hit us: what if we made one or two of them commentators? They would be appointed to talk to us, discuss, and provide us with their insights. Listening while their colleagues talk will spring others into action – they’ll likely expand on something.

We’ve all done it in college: Blend in with the mass of other students at the lecture and not pay attention. The same thing happens when everyone’s cameras are off.

Asking people to switch them on has several benefits for you as a workshop moderator:

Sometimes, getting workshop participants to talk can be difficult. Other times, it might be hard to get them to stop. You could run into one of their long-lasting internal struggles. Everyone starts discussing something that’s important business-wise but is not making you any wiser.
In those situations, having a “for later” page/board in Figma was a lifesaver. Magic words when we felt control slipping away from us: “How about we put this on the Important issues board and get back to it at the end of our workshop?”

In a live workshop, we would usually step outside for a second and silently coordinate about the next steps. Being on a video call makes that hardly possible. 

We used Slack as a back channel. Skype or any kind of chatting tool will be just fine. Btw, turn your notifications off when screen sharing. You don’t want your clients to see the kinds of profanities that get shared on the #bad_jokes channel.

Chatting on Slack helped us keep things flowing smoothly and monitor the workshop’s progress. It’s also great for venting your frustrations and encouraging each other. Believe us, you’ll need it.

In previous remote workshops, we noticed that a 2-4 hour duration was the sweet spot. Everyone’s brains turn into mashed potatoes after that. That’s why we opted for a shorter workshop duration but more instances overall.

We used the rest of the daily hours to summarize the work completed so far. Starting each day with a summary of the previous day gives participants the feeling of progress and energizes them for the day ahead. 

There you are. Use these tips well, and you’ll do your remote workshop like a pro. We’d be glad to hear back about how these tips worked for you — drop us a line.

UX is all about people, and funnily enough, so is psychology. That’s why we have three psychologists on our team, two of whom are writing this. 

Some impactful psychology findings and theories are in almost every UX article (?  hey there, Gestalt principles), while others are left behind. So, here’s a list of lesser-known psychology insights you can apply right away on your next project.

People remember things that stand out. Out of the ordinary, unusual and strange. Break rules of the physical world in your designs on purpose to make people remember something.

When to use: onboarding screens, delight points in user flow, splash screens

German researcher von Restorff found that “sticking out to be remembered” works even without bizarreness. For instance, people will better remember the word “chair” if words for fruit surround it. 

How to apply it in UX? Stretch your brand book a bit and create a few distinctive screens. The visual novelty will make them more memorable.

When to use: critical screen (e.g., checkout), onboarding, new features’ screens

We hate losing two to three times more than we like winning or gaining something. Playing it safe is what kept your ancestors from eating that “maybe rotten” mammoth.

Frame the (in)action in your app as avoiding something bad for users, and you should see an uplift in that behavior. But don’t overdo it, don’t scare users all the time.

When to use: upsell, permission priming, landing pages, pricing pages

Psychologist Zeigarnik discovered that people better remember tasks they haven’t finished than the ones they have. So, break user flows (or content) into smaller chunks to make people come back for more.

When to use: shopping carts, profile setting, learning lessons, long forms

Dad’s smile, mum’s hug, grandparents’ bribe sweets – that’s how you’ve learned your native language. They’ve praised every linguistic step you’ve taken. So do the same for your users: praise them every time they take the desired action.

When to use: success screens, first interactions with the app, teaching users more complex features, confirmation emails

This one is simple: tell people why they should do something. Be clear and concise in your copy and design, and you should see more users taking that action. Bonus points: combine it with a “You lose!” insight.

When to use: checkout, small new features, permission priming, upsell, error messages

Compliments work. Even when people are warned that someone will try to flatter their way to a “yes”.

Use it for praising the user’s action (like “Tap on the back”) or as a primer for asking users to do something. Keep your compliments specific and believable. 

When to use: onboarding, landing pages, success screens

We love to think our behavior is consistent. We value it in others and in ourselves. Leverage that in UX. Occasionally, remind users how using your app aligns with their previous behavior.

When to use: additional requests, escalating user commitment, soft retention

Next time you’re in a cafe, observe people when they’re sitting down at the table. Everyone moves their chair around a bit. Why? We like to customize our environment. Your app shouldn’t be an exception.

When to use: customizable UI color, personal shortcuts in the app, favorites, user name visible

Getting better at something feels good. From tiny things like making your first real dish (fish sticks don’t count) to getting an MA in whatever makes you happy (or rich).

Acquiring a new skill or understanding a new concept is a reward in itself. Takeaway: match the UX to the users’ competence level. 

When to use: reveal complex features and subfeatures, add shortcuts, remove UI elements (e.g. labels)

Should you apply all of these insights straight away? Of course not. Choose the ones that fit your project best.

If it works out, cool. Be sure to mention us in your Apple Design Awards acceptance speech. If not, it’s a long list, choose another insight and bake it into your designs. After all, to design is to experiment, right?

I have always been easily fascinated by new software. As a teenager, I used to install each and every program and game that I could get my hands on from PC magazine CDs. Some of them were useful (Pro Secretary typing lessons), and some of them… not so much. As I entered the world of design, I learned that the most designers belong to a single religion — Adobe Suite. Soon I started worshiping the great trinity myself – Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign became my companions in the years to come. But then, in 2014, I saw a video for Affinity Designer, and my faith was rocked.

Apart from it being new and cool-looking, one of the first things I noticed about Affinity Designer was the price. Only $49.99 for professional software and a 50% student discount on top of that? No subscription and free updates for life? Affinity, say no more — you had me at “student discount.”

Another thing that made Designer different than Illustrator was the three “Personas”: Draw, Pixel, and Export Persona. The Persona modes allow you to quickly switch from vector to pixel-based editing. The export feature allows exporting to a vast number of file types (even PSDs, with some limitations).

Even before Affinity came into my life, I was more of an Illustrator than a Photoshop person. I loved working with vectors and used Photoshop only when it was really necessary. Having a “Pixel persona” within my go-to vector tool was something that I didn’t know I needed so much. In Pixel Persona, I could edit my pixels and use pixel brushes for my illustrations with no sweat.

One of the things I love most about Affinity is how simple, beautiful, and satisfying the UI is. Performing tasks in Affinity is easier, more fluid, and much faster than in Adobe (OpenGL helps with that). Affinity is quick and responsive, and I’m spoiled with live previewing.

For someone like me, who used the eraser in school heavily, the history section of Affinity is an awesome tool. You can undo/redo over 8,000 history steps instantly, and even better — you can take snapshots. A snapshot is something like version control — storing various versions of your project in just one file.

Affinity Designer can zoom to an insane amount — one million percent. That should give goosebumps to all you pixel-perfect types out there. You can zoom, then zoom some more… and more… and more… and so on.

As in every love story, not everything is perfect. One of the biggest (and not easy-to-overcome) flaws is that it’s not the industry standard. Yes, Affinity does have options to export your files as .ai or .psd but with limitations. Sharing your files with others is a bit of a problem, too. Finally, Affinity Designer is fully optimized for UI design (dynamic symbols and most of the other features that Sketch or Figma offer), but for now, it lacks integration with Zeplin and InVision, as well as plugin support.