Design Labs for User Research

Once you have a list of potential participants, draft a short invitation that provides some background and context, including:

• How you got their contact information
• The purpose of your request
• Dates and time slots
• Location (on-site or virtual)
• Time commitment
• How to sign up + deadline
• How their feedback will be used
• Any other requirements, such as signing an NDA ahead of time (see Step 4)

• Compensation or reward for participation (highly recommended)

Send one reminder to anyone who hasn’t responded or signed up 24-48 hours before the deadline.

Then, confirm signups by sending an email and calendar invitation recapping:

• Topic and purpose
• Date, time, location, and how to join (room details or video link)

• Context and expectations (who will be in the room, whether it’s recorded, and how their input will be used)

At least a few weeks before the Design Lab, work with your event team and lab facilitators to coordinate logistics, roles, and customer consent.

a) Rooms and environment

• Book a quiet room (or breakout area) with:
  • Table and chairs for everyone
  • Power outlets and reliable Wi‑Fi
  • If possible, a monitor or large screen to show concepts and/or prototypes
• If you can’t get a dedicated room, aim for:
  • A quiet corner of the booth or nearby meeting area

  • Headset mics or a voice recorder if there’s background noise

b) Roles

For each session, define who is doing what. One person can serve multiple roles, but the facilitator and notetaker should be different people to ensure the facilitator can focus on the customer.

• Facilitator: leads the conversation, keeps time, manages activities
• Product expert: walks through concepts and/or prototypes, answers questions, and clarifies constraints
• Notetaker: captures key quotes, observations, and decisions

• It can also be helpful to have a technical expert to answer detailed questions.

c) NDAs, IP assignment, and consent

Since confidential and/or sensitive information may come up during the Design Lab, we highly recommend working with your legal team ahead of time to prepare a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that includes language about:

• Your company’s ownership of any ideas, feedback, or concepts shared in the session
• Recording the session (audio/video) for internal use

• Using anonymized quotes or artifacts in internal documents and presentations

Send this NDA to attendees so they can review and sign it ahead of time, and have extra copies (digital or paper) on hand if needed.

Gather your materials and create a digital whiteboard or shared document to guide the session.

Physical / digital materials:

• Whiteboard (projected or screen‑shared) or shared document
• Meeting recording tool, such as Loom
• Prototypes (Figma, clickable demo, screenshots) or conceptual visuals
• For co-designing sessions:
  • Journey map or flow canvas
  • “Drag‑and‑drop” components, stickers, or shapes
• For evaluating concepts and gathering feedback:
  • Frames/screens for each concept or step
• Optional for in‑person sessions:
  • Sticky notes
  • Markers
  • Printed screens

  • Paper for quick sketches

Create one whiteboard per customer session, and customize the following sections:

• Session header: date, time, customer names/companies, internal team members
• Customer context section: quick bullet points about their role, how they use your product, and other helpful background information
• Columns for:
  • What they loved: What are they loving about the concept? What’s going well? This is what you want to keep or do more of in the future.
  • Opportunities: What didn’t go as expected? What was confusing, missing, or could have been better? Don’t worry about how to fix it yet. Just focus on the customer’s feedback.
  • Notes: Write down any other notes, questions, follow-ups, or items to revisit later.
  • Open sketching space: For co-designing the ideal future state with customers

Agendas and discussion guides help you gather usable feedback consistently, create a better experience for attendees, and make it easier for facilitators. You don’t need a multi-page, word-for-word script. A short outline is plenty.

Include:

• Opening (5–10 mins)
  • Welcome, intros, purpose of the session
  • How the session will run, what you’ll do with their input
  • Confirm consent and recording
• Core activities (35–45 mins)
  • For co-designing sessions:
    • Warm‑up: “Walk me through how you do X today.”
    • Mapping: “Let’s map that flow / hierarchy together.”
    • Co‑design: “If you could wave a magic wand, what would this look like?”
  • For evaluating concepts and gathering feedback:
    • Walkthrough: Show concept/prototype in small chunks.
    • Reactions: “What stands out?” “What’s confusing?” “Do you have any suggestions for improvements?”
    • Trade‑offs: “If we had to deliver a simpler version first, what would you keep vs. cut?”
• Wrap‑up (5–10 mins)
  • Ask: “Is there anything we didn’t ask that you wish we had?”
  • Invite roadmap questions (without over‑promising)
  • Tell them if and when you’ll follow up + how they will receive compensation (if applicable)

Now it’s time to run the session. Use the agenda and discussion guide you created in Step 6, and run the Design Lab with these tips in mind:

• Greet them, thank them for their time and expertise, and take a minute or two to build rapport before diving in.
• Restate the purpose of the session in plain language. Clarify that this is not a sales pitch or support session, but rather, an interactive design and research lab where their feedback shapes what you build.
• Give them a preview of what will happen during the session, and confirm NDA and consent.
• Prioritize the customer’s voice. Aside from the facilitator, all other attendees from your company will be listening unless they are asked a question.

• Avoid over‑explaining or leading the customer. Let confusion surface. (That’s a useful signal!) If you need to clarify, use it as a prompt: “The fact that this wasn’t clear is helpful for us. What did you think this did when you first saw it?”

During each part of the Design Lab, ask open questions to gather unbiased information. Here are some examples. The notetaker should capture notes and quotes on the whiteboard or document throughout the session.

Understanding their current reality:

• “Tell me about your role and day-to-day responsibilities.”
• “Walk us through how you currently handle [problem, task, or workflow you’re exploring].”
• “Tell me about the last time you did X. What triggered it? What tools did you use?”
• “Where does this usually go wrong or take longer than you’d like?”

• “What have you tried to solve this?”

If you’re co-designing a new concept:

• Use your whiteboard template to sketch steps, states, or screens together.
• Invite them to reorganize or annotate. “If this were your product, where would this live?” “What would be on this screen for it to be genuinely useful?”
• “What would this replace for you today?”

• “How would you explain this to a colleague who doesn’t like new tools?”

If you’re refining an existing concept:

• Walk through your prototype or concept one flow or section at a time. Ask them to think aloud as they go: “What do you expect to happen next?”

• “Imagine you’re actually doing this for your team right now. What works? What’s missing?”

Where helpful, ask for a simple rating or prioritization:

• “On a scale from 1–5, how valuable would this be if we shipped it exactly as shown?”

• “If we could only deliver one of these three improvements first, which one would you choose and why?”

Closing and next steps:

• “Which part of what you saw today feels most promising?”
• “What, if anything, worries you or feels off?”
• “What questions do you have for us?”
• Invite roadmap‑level questions, and answer transparently without committing to specifics.
• Thank them genuinely, and restate the value of their input – regardless of whether it was positive or not.

• If you’re offering compensation (recommended best practice), share how they’ll receive it and when.

Finally, analyze the feedback while memories are fresh and look for opportunities to make improvements and to inform roadmaps.

• Look for themes around pain points, delights, and unmet needs.
• Translate these themes into clear takeaways that product and design leaders can act on.
• Share the findings broadly through live debriefs and/or asynchronously through a document, such as a Confluence page, slide deck, or video recording using a tool like Loom.