Designing Workshops That Look Unstructured (But Aren’t)

I recently ran a couple of interactive sessions on UX Theatre at the Design Leadership Summit in Toronto. A few weeks out, I learned my accepted roundtable proposal had been slotted into an “interactive session” format instead. Rather than redesigning everything, I kept my plan and treated both as conversations.

If you have ever felt pressure to pack a session with activities, this might sound familiar.

The first time I presented on UX Theatre was in 2020 at the Information Architecture Summit (now the IA Conference), in a poster session. People drifted in, walked through the poster, lingered, and told their own stories, commiserating about the presence of UX Theatre and trading ways to cope. That experience showed me that almost everyone has a story about UX Theatre, and that a conversational, story-first format fits this topic best.

So I decided that a stripped-down format would be best for my interactive sessions in Toronto. But “stripped down” doesn’t mean “no plan.” I designed the sessions carefully to feel open and informal while still guiding toward meaningful conversation. This included:

• Briefly defining UX Theatre and sharing a few examples to set context

• Inviting people to tell their own stories in a safe space

• Creating room for participants to connect informally with each other

• Surfacing shared mitigation strategies and inviting the group to add their own approaches

I brought no materials beyond my tablet with a few speaking notes and prompting questions to steer the conversation. Both sessions felt open, honest and relaxed in that way you get when people realize they are allowed to drop the script.

A few participants even told me it had been their favourite session of the conference.

Designing a workshop doesn’t always mean adding more structure, activities, or slides. It can mean designing lightly but intentionally, creating a safe container for people to share and connect in their own way. In this case, going “acapella” created the most genuine opportunity for connection and learning. No slides. No exercises. Just a focused conversation.

The next time you are planning a workshop, ask yourself: where could you remove some structure by design to create more genuine opportunities for collaboration among participants?