So Research walked into a Workshop...

and the outcome was magical.

As a design researcher turned facilitator, I suggest conducting research to educate almost every workshop engagement I work on. Either out of fear or overconfidence, workshop sponsors politely turn me down using the excuse of “there’s no time”, “It’s too expensive”, or “we already know what problem to solve”.

During a run-of-the-mill workshop-planning call, I suggested research-as-a-service before the workshop kicked off, and for the first time in my extended-team’s history (Jan. 2016), the sponsor said "yes"! Not only saying "yes" to me, but also to my teammate and fellow researcher, Nicholas Jayanty. We were given 3 days to conduct research, at 6 different locations, followed by 3 days to comprehend, synthesize what was possible, and quickly turn around findings before the workshop began. It wasn’t much time in any respect, but in that short runway, we were still able to make an impact to the workshop, the outcomes, and the future signings.

In order to share our victory and educate others on the possibility, we developed a stand-alone case-study for Client Partners and Account Partners. This case-study is meant to be distributable internally and externally.

This project was awarded an IBM Service Excellence Award in December, 2017!