Workshop facilitation·Co-design·Writing
Facilitation as Design: A Co‑Design Approach
How I use workshops, tools, and facilitation to design with diverse voices.
Overview
I use workshops as a design tool—to educate, brainstorm, resolve conflict, and create space for historically excluded voices. Since 2020, I've designed, facilitated, and written about workshops as a deliberate practice, not just a means to an end.
At its core, facilitation is my favorite part of design: collaborating with diverse groups of people to build shared understanding. My approach is simple—I aim to be the most curious person in the room, asking the questions others may be thinking but haven't voiced yet.
I believe empathy is a UX designer's superpower, and I practice it most directly through facilitation. Real innovation happens when people feel seen, heard, and able to understand one another's perspectives.
Further Reading
WIP Co-Design for DE&I Guidebook (Microsoft Inclusive Design) →
Master thesis: Co-designing a community investment fund →
How I approach facilitation in practice
- Design workshops that build relationships first—creating a space that feels creative, open, and collaborative—before shaping outcomes together in more focused settings.
- Facilitators are there to bring out ideas, discover fear, hopes, answer questions of co-designers. Be creative in asking questions, listening, probing deeper, and reframing. Let design and solutions come from co-designers.
- Facilitators are there to balance out social power imbalance. Encourage the historically excluded voices to take up space, invite privileged individuals to listen with curiosity. The end goal is to build common understanding and trust.
- The facilitator or note taker should take notes throughout the activity and, at the end, share observations, summary, and next steps.
- If possible, use a mix of visual, verbal, and writing activities to accommodate all personalities and thinking styles.
- Accommodate people with low literacy, ESL group, or different abilities; pair people up as a small group with a notetaker.
- Use 2-4-group share out format for large groups. Ask people to pair up and share with each other, those pairs find pairs to make a 4-person group and share for the bigger group. You can also take volunteers to share takeaways in the large group, making sure diverse voices are heard.
- Before leaving each session, ask for feedback on how the session went and how it could be improved.
Workshop Examples
Learning How to Design for AI
Date
June 2023
Participants
+100 PMs, Engineers, Designers, Researchers
Description
AI Matchmaking turned fuzzy AI ideas into concrete user solutions. During 2023 Microsoft Learn Week, I co-facilitated workshop to help PMs break down emerging AI capabilities and pair them with real user needs—grounding early AI innovation in UX thinking.
Using Facilitation to Align Teams with Conflicting Priorities
Date
Dec 2022
Participants
Core Privacy pod (PM, Content, Legal, Design, Research, Engineering)
Description
As the design deadline approached, partner feedback became increasingly conflicted, revealing a misalignment in priorities rather than a design issue. I facilitated a workshop to surface these differences and anchor discussion in shared tradeoffs. By laying out perspectives without judgment, we aligned on a balanced direction the team could collectively support and move forward with.
New Metaphor: Images to build mutuality
Date
2023–2024
Audience
Microsoft Inclusive Design
Description
This project is an example from my co‑design playbook work. Alongside three other Microsoft designers and researchers, I led the creation of a co‑design playbook focused on designing with diverse groups. We shared this work at Microsoft Design Week in collaboration with the Director of Inclusive Design, where it received an enthusiastic response from the design community.
Impact
"Over the past two years, Microsoft hired over 70,000 new employees — many of whom had never heard of inclusive design. You generated clarity and energy around the topic across design and research teams, using your free time to educate employees while simultaneously building a co-design toolkit to scale your efforts. As head of inclusive design across the company, I have an understanding of what the company needs — and the co-design toolkit is much needed."