Design

Meeting Templates

The ultimate pack of customer success meeting agenda templates

Team
Contributed
Design
Marketing
Brainstorming Session
Template by
Shopify
Courtney Symons
Lead Writer
at
Shopify
Courtney Symons
Preparation

Preparation

Attendees

  • Invite stakeholders that are representatives from each discipline that is relevant (design, product, engineering, etc)
  • Assign a facilitator that is neutral to act as the scribe and decision-maker

Space 

  • Choose a spot that the team doesn’t regularly use for meetings. Be sure to have a big blank wall where you can place post-it notes from your brainstorming session

Time

  • Consider one hour for a micro-session, three to four hours for a medium-sized discussion, and a full day for a larger project

To bring

(if this is a virtual meeting try to use online tools to mimic the post-it notes)

  • Chart paper
  • Post-it notes
  • Dot stickers
  • Pens

Brainstorming Session

Break the Ice

Tell me a story about… What did you want to be when you were younger... Where do you want to go on holiday and why? etc. 

To make sure your session remains focused, you should begin with a question. What specifically are you trying to solve?

  1. How can we get people to perform X specific action?
  2. What would lead to increased conversion on X client’s site?
  3. How can we achieve X result?

Establish rules for the session

  • No idea is stupid
  • Postpone criticism. Feel free to ask clarification questions, but wait until the team decides whether to dig into that particular idea to provide any constructive feedback
  • Don't focus on the solution in the early stages of the brainstorm — just focus on the problem
  • You don’t need to raise your hand to speak, but make sure you’re not cutting anyone off
  • No phones or laptops

Brainstorm

A great way to encourage everyone to speak up and to mitigate groupthink is to begin with silence: a solo brainstorm where each individual writes down all of their ideas on post-it notes. This should only last a few minutes. Be sure to use a timer to make sure you stay on track. As people are jotting down their ideas, the facilitator can begin to collect those post-its and start grouping them into themes and concepts onto the whiteboard or blank wall.

Voting

After the initial brainstorming session, it’s often useful to have small, circular colored stickers so that people can vote on their preferred ideas. Consider giving each person a maximum of two stickers (or “votes”) per brainstorming sprint, and dole them out accordingly.

Summarize

The facilitator should paraphrase and synthesize as many of the points as possible to make sure everyone is following.

Prioritize

When the top ideas have been voted upon, it’s time to decide how to take action. Here are two questions the group should determine before leaving the room:

  • What is our deadline? This will vary greatly depending on the scope of the project. It could range from next week to the end of the year. Make sure you choose an ambitious, but achievable, timeframe
  • Who will own this? It could be that the Project Manager will take ownership of each of these line items, but cross-collaboration between teams means there could be multiple stakeholders for each item
Featured
Contributed
Design
Design Workshop
Template by
Miro
Andrey Khusid
CEO
at
Miro
Andrey Khusid
Preparation

Preparation

Note any documents that need to be reviewed or activities that need to be completed before the workshop.

Problems

Focus on the customer’s experiences. Prioritize them in order of severity and choose one or two to focus on. Resist the desire to skip ahead to “fixing” until you have organized the problems you are going to solve.

Solutions Brainstorm

It’s time to figure out how to solve the problem, design the flow, or develop the plan.

Brainstorming tips:

  • The more ideas the better!
  • Don’t worry about how feasible an idea is just yet (Expensive ideas may lead to other ideas that fit your resources)
  • Provide sketching materials. Encourage everyone to visualize the solution
  • If the group is large, break into smaller, cross-disciplinary teams and then report ideas back to the group

Size & Prioritize

List your potential solutions in the following format --> Solution | Impact | Effort

  • Rewrite all site copy | medium | medium
  • Leverage API to automate enrollment | medium | large

Do we need to...

  • Gather more evidence? (Can we understand the problem better?)
  • Explore alternate solutions? (We loved these solutions but they’re too big. Let’s find a quicker fix to fit our timeline)
  • Research solution size in more detail? (We need more information to understand which solution requires less effort)

Next Steps

  • @name Task by DUE-DATE

Parking Lot

Store topics and ideas that are out of scope or beyond reach for this workshop.

Product
Marketing
Design
Project Kick-Off Meeting
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Project Name:

Project Name:

Timeline:

Helpful Links:

What are the goals of this project?

  • Review or decide on project goals. 
  • Goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely)

Audience & Value Proposition

Quick reminder of who the target audience is for the project and what the core value proposition is

Major tasks and timeline

  • Make sure every part of the project has an owner and timeline

Decisions that need to be made

  • What decisions need to be made? (Name)
  • List topics for discussion/decision here, specifically noting what needs to be decided

Next Steps

  • @name Task by DUE-DATE
Product
Design
User Research
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Purpose

Purpose

What is the main focus of this session (e.g., general performance, feature requests, product bugs)?

User Background

Relevant user information and demographics to understand the persona of the interviewee.

Response to Scripted Questions

List all planned questions for this particular user research study. Record the interviewee's response to each question.

Positive Highlights

Did the user mention any specific positive aspects in relation to the topic of this session?

Negative Feedback / Concerns

Did the user mention any specific negative aspects in relation to the topic of this session? How could we improve them?

Other Feedback

Did the user provide notable feedback outside the scope of this session that could help other business objectives?

Key Insights

Summarize the key insights that you learned from this user research session. If any are actionable, you can assign them to your team members right from here.

Notes / Quotes for Marketing

Were there any notes, quotes, or anecdotes that may assist marketing in their messaging to other users?

Featured
Design
Marketing
Creative Brainstorming
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Step-by-step process to run a creative brainstorming session

Overview & Objective

State your project’s audience and objective in a clear and focused way.


State the Ground Rules

Brainstorming is a place and time where anything goes. Rules:

  • All ideas are welcome. Negativity is not.
  • Build on ideas. Don't shoot them down.
  • Do not censor yourself. Just say it.
  • Encourage participation from everyone
  • No interruptions from outside.

First Half: Brainstorm

Start sharing ideas. Note them somewhere where everyone can see (whether that be a poster, whiteboard, or in your Hugo meeting notes in the highlighted area below). To keep your creative juices flowing you may also want to provide toys, coloring books, magazines, doodling pads etc.

Halftime: Refine

Stop and take a vote on each idea. Thumbs up or down. Toss the ideas that lack support.

Improve on the Best Ideas

Look at the best ideas from halftime. Ask if there are ways to improve them, or come up with ideas that are similar.

Brainstorm Round Two

Once you’ve covered each of the good ideas, generate more new ideas just as you did at the beginning of the session.

Brainstorm


Next Steps

  • @name Task by DUE-DATE
Design
Product
User or Usability Testing
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Project

Project

Prototype Link: 

User Name: 

User Background: 

--

What is being tested?


What is being measured/evaluated?


--

Running the test

Intro

  • Give your users context (e.g. image you’re using this app in a real-world situation
  • Recordings are confidential and for internal purposes only
  • You’re not being tested. It’s the design.
  • Thank your users and remind them you’re asking for feedback because you’re eager to improve your user experience

Example questions to ask

  • I noticed a bit of hesitation there, what stopped you?
  • What do you think this button is going to do?
  • What’s most appealing about this product?
  • What’s the hardest part about using this product?
  • Was there anything surprising or unexpected about this product?
  • What could be done to improve this product?
  • What may be missing? What else would you like to see?
  • What do you like/dislike about the way it works?
  • How do you think this product is going to help you?
  • Would you use this product today?
  • Why do you think someone would use this product?

Results

Positive Highlights


Negative Feedback / Concerns


Other Feedback


Key Insights


Notes / Quotes for Marketing


Design
Design Critique
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Presenter:

Presenter: 

Project: 

Video Call Link: 

Design Prototype Link: 

--

Goal or Problem

Give a brief summary of the project goal or problem you are trying to solve with this design including relevant info on the audience and expected results.

Presentation

Present the design. Optionally, if you have more than one version, you may want to show all versions and explain your analysis of them.

Questions

The group will then discuss the design. Rather than making observations or judgments, try to mostly ask questions, such as:

  • “Did you consider using a visual to explain what’s going on instead of a paragraph of text?” 
  • “How come you decided to go with a segmented control instead of a preview of each section?” 
  • “Why does this pane slide in from the side instead of from the bottom?” 
  • “Have you seen App X? It does something similar and feels better/worse.”

Notes & Unanswered Questions

Note insights about the design here. Remember, you do not need to decide what to do with this information at this meeting. The main purpose is to get new thinking out into the open.


Action Items

  • @name Task by DUE-DATE
Design
Design Session
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Preparation

Preparation

Note any documents that need to be reviewed or activities that need to be completed before the workshop.


--

Problems

Focus on the customer’s actual experiences. Prioritize them in order of severity and choose one or two to focus on. Resist the desire to skip ahead to “fixing” until you have organized the problems you are going to solve.

Solutions Brainstorm

It’s time to figure out how to solve the problem, design the flow, or develop the plan.

Brainstorming tips:

  • The more ideas the better!
  • Don’t worry about how feasible an idea is just yet. Expensive ideas may lead to other ideas that fit your resources
  • Provide sketching materials. Encourage everyone to visualize the solution.
  • If the group is large, break into smaller, cross-disciplinary teams and then report ideas back to the group.

Size & Prioritize

List your potential solutions in the following format --> Solution | Impact | Effort

  • Rewrite all site copy | medium | medium
  • Leverage API to automate enrollment | medium | large

Do we need to...

  • Gather more evidence? (Can we understand the problem better?)
  • Explore alternate solutions? (We loved these solutions but they’re too big. Let’s find a quicker fix to fit our timeline.)
  • Research solution size in more detail? (We need more information to understand which solution actually requires less effort.)

Next Steps

  • @name Task by DUE-DATE

--

Parking Lot

Store topics and ideas that are out of scope or beyond reach for this workshop.


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Templates for designers and creative teams to run better meetings

Here you will find a variety of different design meeting agenda templates for a variety of different project or project types. These are ready-made agendas which can be scaled, edited, and customized for your needs.

Find the specific template you need and then view its template notes for high-level guidance. If you don't see what you need, check out our design meeting agenda templates guidelines for information that will help you create a custom template or modify an existing one.

Remember to save your design meeting agenda templates. You can can add them to your Hugo account, download them as Word docs, or make a copy as a Google Doc.

What is a design meeting?

Generally a design meeting is a coordination session between the project and design team and any respective stakeholders.

In other words, this is when you need to work together—in person or virtually—to resolve any differences about the overall look and feel of your project.

What kind of things are we talking about?

A product’s visual style: color palettes, typography, and imagery.

A product or service’s functionality: navigation, features, and interactions.

The feel of the overall experience: website elements design, including web pages and layouts.

How do I use a design meeting agenda to make sure we are all on the same page?

A design team meeting often brings in all of your stakeholders for your project or product idea. Now the key is to make sure your stakeholders know that this is not just an "art" meeting.

Explain why you’re having a design meeting and what purpose it serves for your project team.

Make sure that they feel comfortable with it. Do they want to attend? Do they need to be there? If a couple of them are busy, make sure that you rotate the schedule so that each of them gets along and understands what is going on.

Create a design meeting agenda template. Make sure to break it down into smaller chunks and give plenty of time for discussion. Remember that sometimes there will be things you need to agree on, such as what your color scheme will be, and in other cases you may need to make some general decisions but leave the final execution up to the designer.

The key here is to think about what your overall goals are for the meeting. Are you trying to reach consensus on the design of your project or product? You may need to get conflicting ideas and opinions out in the open, so that everyone is working toward an agreed-upon design solution.

Once you decide what those goals are, you can draw up a design meeting agenda template and keep track of all of your decisions throughout the course of the meeting.

Design meeting best practices:

Be clear on actin items. You should also make sure that you are clear about any actions that need to be done as a result of your design meeting. For example:
-  Edit the style guide.
-  Create the mockups.
Put all of these details on the design meeting agenda so that everyone is clear about what needs to happen next.

Keep notes front and center. This is a good habit to get into when running any meeting, but it’s particularly important for design meetings. There may be a lot of ideas thrown around, and it's important to be able to review all the feedback later.

Be realistic. It’s important to finish each step of the design process in a timely fashion so that you’re always on track to meet your project goals. To do that, you need to stay realistic about how long it's going to take. If you're not familiar with how long things take, have several product ideas in mind before the design meeting.

What is the purpose of a design meeting?

As with all meetings, it's a good idea to state the purpose of your design meeting up front so that everyone knows what you need to accomplish. The purpose might look something like this:
-  Discuss the overall look and feel of your project or service. Discuss our various design options.
-  Review how the design of your project or service support the marketing plan.
-  Discuss website's navigation system. Are there any changes?
-  Review site elements, such as web pages.

Scroll Down for More Design Meeting Agenda Templates

Design meetings are among the more unique types of meetings in any business, requiring more brainstorming and critique than meetings run by other teams. They’re often highly collaborative, with real concepts and prototypes taking center stage. But even if you know what project is going to be discussed, having an agenda for the meeting helps keep the meeting on track and moving forward.

Below is a selection of templates for the most common types of design-focused meetings. For more meeting agendas of all kinds, visit our whole library which includes 80+ agenda template examples. 👇

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