Workshop Design · Facilitation Research · AI-Assisted Design

Soft Start, Sharp Focus

Three short exercises that help a team actually settle into a session before the real agenda starts.

Year: 2024
Role: Workshop designer, facilitator, researcher
Context: Mid-size technology company, product team
Format: Three exercises, first 20 minutes of a two-hour session
Tools: Digital toolkit, AI-generated prompts
Status: Adopted as the standard opener

The Design Problem

In years of facilitation work I kept seeing the same pattern. People arrived with the previous meeting still in their heads, unfinished tasks, unresolved tension, and the quality of the session suffered for it. Most teams know a proper check-in helps, but they skip it because there were no practical tools that fit in under twenty minutes.

The Toolkit

Three short AI-assisted exercises for the first twenty minutes. Each works on something different: where people stand on the topic, what role they take, and what they might be missing.

Planets

Each person places themselves on a map relative to the topic. Shows where assumptions and distances are before discussion begins.

Archetype Selector

Each person picks a participation role for this session. Makes unspoken modes visible and open to discussion.

Empathy Prompts

AI-generated questions tailored to the session topic. Prompts people to think from a different angle before decisions are made.

Planets exercise: theme selection and visual language voting — Planets. Each person places themselves relative to the topic before anyone speaks.

Archetype Selector: eight participant role types connected in a role map — Archetype Selector. Eight roles, picked openly, so the mode people are in stops being a guess.

What Made It Work

The first twenty minutes are for the group, before the agenda starts. People need a moment to arrive. AI writes the prompts, and the facilitator runs the room. That split worked well in all three sessions.

Tested and Refined

Three sessions with a product team at a mid-size technology company in 2024. Timing was adjusted between sessions to keep the opener within twenty minutes. Planets was simplified after the first session. Empathy Prompts were reduced from five questions to three.

After the demo, participants named six workshop risks: not enough time, conflicting priorities, low participation, no follow-up, going off-topic, and team tension. These shaped the final structure of the toolkit.

Outcomes

✓The three exercises became the standard opener for product team sessions, replacing unstructured check-ins
✓Planets brought hidden assumptions to the surface early, reducing late-session debate
✓Session outputs became working documents used by HR and project planning teams (contents confidential)

What Comes Next

Next I want to explore what a shared room means when people work across distances and boundaries.

Next project

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