Writing an Effective Proposal for a Discovery Workshop

Context

As the newly appointed lead UX designer for a new LMS Software, you find yourself in charge of revamping a widely-used legacy version of the product, which is highly regarded by industry experts worldwide. There are better ways to go than diving into the design phase, as you recognize the importance of embarking on a comprehensive Discovery process.

Why is Discovery Workshop Important?

Discovery workshops are a crucial starting point for any project as they provide a structured approach to exploring vague ideas, technologies, and problems. These workshops offer insights into key challenges and uncover crucial business objectives. The goal of discovery workshop services is to ensure that all key stakeholders mutually agree upon these challenges and objectives to provide a roadmap for a project’s success.

By bringing together project teams, stakeholders, and domain experts, discovery workshops allow the sharing of different perspectives, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the project’s goals and objectives. The benefits of a discovery workshop are numerous, and the insights obtained can help organizations avoid costly mistakes and ensure that projects are aligned with their strategic goals.

How to Write a Proposal for a Discovery Workshop

I structured the workshop to focus on the business value it brings the attendees. While it undoubtedly contributes to informing our product, the primary pitch revolves around the opportunity for customer stakeholders to receive an improved and efficient solution — the better product. I condensed each activity to accommodate their time constraints, ensuring a shorter duration for the workshop. Additionally, I carefully curated the itinerary, including only the essential activities necessary to achieve our workshop goals.

The workshop consisted of three essential components:

1. Persona Alignment: enabling us to define the target user
2. Customer Journey Mapping: fostering empathy by understanding the experiences of the persona
3. Service Blueprint Workshop: mapping out the actions required from our customers to support the persona.

Additionally, a fourth layer focuses on what our company needs to do to support our customers and, ultimately, the end-user persona. The primary objective of these activities is to gather insights that inform the design of a solution tailored to the needs of our target users.

Persona Alignment

Creating an accurate and well-aligned end-user persona is crucial for the success of our LMS software. By understanding our target audience’s needs, goals, and characteristics, we can tailor our product to deliver an exceptional user experience. Here is the process we will follow to align the end-user persona:

Research: We will conduct in-depth research to gather insights about our target users. This research may include interviews, surveys, and data analysis to comprehensively understand their preferences, pain points, and expectations related to LMS software.

User Segmentation: We will identify key user segments or groups within our target audience based on the research findings. Each segment may have distinct characteristics, requirements, and behaviors.

Persona Creation: We will create a persona for each user segment — a fictional representation of a typical user within that segment. This persona will encompass demographic information, job roles, goals, motivations, challenges, and behaviors relevant to their use of our LMS software.

Persona Alignment: Once the personas are developed, we will review and refine them to ensure they accurately reflect the characteristics and needs of our end users. This alignment process may involve validating the personas with user feedback, conducting additional research, and seeking stakeholder input.

Persona Integration: The aligned end-user personas will serve as a guiding framework throughout our LMS software’s development and design process. We will refer to these personas to inform design decisions, feature prioritization, and usability testing.

Continuous Iteration: As our understanding of the end-users evolves, and we gather more insights, we will regularly revisit and update the personas to ensure they remain relevant and aligned with our target audience.

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is a valuable tool for understanding users’ end-to-end experience interacting with our LMS software. By visualizing the various touchpoints and interactions, we can identify pain points and opportunities for improvement and deliver a more user-centric solution. Here is the process for customer journey mapping for our LMS software:

Outline the Journey Stages: Map out the different stages or phases of the user journey with our LMS software. This typically includes initial discovery, registration, course selection, content consumption, assessments, and completion.

Identify Touchpoints: Within each stage, identify users’ specific touchpoints or interactions with our LMS software. These touchpoints include website visits, app usage, email communication, support requests, and more.

Gather User Insights: Gather insights from various sources to understand user behavior and expectations at each touchpoint. This can involve user interviews, surveys, analytics data, and feedback from customer support.

Visualize the Customer Journey: Create a visual representation of the journey, illustrating the stages, touchpoints, and user emotions or actions at each step. This can be done using journey mapping templates or software tools.

Identify Pain Points and Opportunities: Analyze the customer journey map to identify pain points, bottlenecks, and areas where users may face challenges or frustrations. Simultaneously, identify opportunities to enhance the user experience, provide additional support, or introduce new features.

Generate Improvement Ideas: Brainstorm potential solutions and ideas to address the identified pain points and enhance the user experience. Consider how each improvement aligns with the goals of the user persona and our LMS software.

Prioritize and Implement Changes: Prioritize the improvement ideas based on feasibility, impact, and alignment with business goals. Develop an action plan to implement the changes, considering the necessary resources, timelines, and stakeholders involved.

This is a vital aspect of discovery workshop services as it helps to regularly review and update the customer journey map as user needs and expectations evolve. Monitor user feedback, conduct usability testing, and iterate on improvements to ensure an ongoing user-centered approach.

Service Blueprint Workshop

Once we establish a persona and map out the user journey, we delve into analyzing the customer’s efforts to support this journey. The Service Blueprint technique, a well-established approach, is employed in this workshop. What sets this workshop apart is the integration of the customer journey map and the service blueprint, providing a comprehensive overview.

We divided the process into departments and outlined the activities for each phase. The resulting map was intricate, featuring numerous arrows. Through these discussions, we realized that the workflows within and between departments were far from straightforward. These insights are crucial, as our solution has the potential to facilitate better coordination. After mapping out the necessary steps for customer departments, we addressed pain points as an additional layer.

Finally, we engaged in collaborative brainstorming sessions to gain a deeper understanding of the issues and explore potential solutions. Throughout the workshop, I documented our productive chaos with photographs capturing post-its, whiteboard markers, and more.

Staying ahead of the competition is vital in today’s ever-changing business world. The discovery workshop is an incredibly valuable tool for businesses looking to gain a competitive edge. However, planning and implementing a successful workshop requires a well-crafted proposal.

An effective proposal sets the tone for the workshop and conveys the value of your discovery workshop services. Crafting a persuasive proposal can be the difference between landing a new client and losing out to a competitor. It is essential to ensure that your proposal captures potential clients’ attention and showcases your workshop’s unique benefits. By investing time and effort into writing a convincing proposal, you can secure more business for your discovery workshop services.