Designing the Conversation: Techniques for Successful Facilitation

Introduction

Why we wrote this book

It’s difficult to think of a professional role that doesn’t have some degree of facilitation attached to it. You may not consider “presenting” or “pitching” or “brainstorming” or “interviewing” to be a part of your job description when you explain what you do. However, this core soft skill—which centers around dealing with and directing people—is at the heart of what many of us do.

We are designers, and as designers, we think about how people interact with the world around them. We love to do research and we love to watch users doing their thing because these are the activities that help us perform the actual design activities that shape our work, which we like to think we’re already pretty good at. It takes ...