The key question of any good facilitator’s mind is, "How can I keep the team engaged and energized throughout the entire session?” This question is especially pressing when it comes to virtual workshops.
Stokes are designed to intentionally bring a sense of excitement and energy back into a “room.” They are short games or activities that can be used to kick off workshops or serve as transitional interludes. They are meant to inject fresh perspective into a group.
Born from both improv and Design Thinking disciplines, stokes are now finding a home in corporate environments. They serve as tools to help teams shift away from day-to-day business operations and into an ideation and growth, “yes, and…” mindset. Interested?
Here are a few stokes to get you started (that can be done virtually!) This particular collection of stokes are modified stokes I have participated in, feel free to put your own spin on them!
For this stoke each participant will need a piece of paper and a pencil.
Duration: 10-15 minutes.
This stoke is great to build empathy and think about specific user needs when creating a common product for a specific use case and user need. It also is a low stake way of getting into the mindset of product ideation and rapid prototyping that is out of the box.
How to play:
This stoke does not require any additional materials.
Duration: 5-10 minutes (depending on size of the group).
This stoke is also a low-stake way to get everyone on the team out of their comfort zone and verbally engaged with the rest of the team.
How to play:
This stoke does not require any additional materials.
A Stanford d.shool classic, this activity is better conducted virtually in smaller groups (less than 15). It is a great activity because while it generates some nonsense phrases, it opens up the room and builds comfortability to off the wall thoughts that may come up in the ideation session that follows. (And also, lots of laughter!)
Example: “When-one-feels-like-a-clown-seek- empathy-and-two-dozen-frogs-for-advice... yes, yes, yes”
How to play:
Each of these stokes are low-risk opportunities to bring some fun and potential reframe to how teams look at problems they are trying to solve. They stretch people both creatively and empathetically. We hope you’ll try at least one at your next long-ish Zoom connect.
Katie Ulrich is a Design Researcher with Sylver. Katie typically spends her time meeting with coworkers and clients, working on building research materials, conducting qualitative research, creating synthesized project deliverables, and analyzing data. She earned a B.S. in Operations & Information Systems Management from Northern Illinois University and an M.S. in Design Innovation from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her career has been focused around people, data, and how to best connect the two in an impactful way.
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