Experiences of Novice Design Facilitators in a Remote Participatory Workshop

In this work, we explore the perspectives of novice design facilitators, or early career designers, as they lead participatory design sessions in a Digital Wellbeing workshop. In our study, five undergraduate and recently graduated students acted as design facilitators in small groups with middle school students to design positive online social experiences. Through a pre-workshop training sessions, observations during the workshop, and individual post-workshop interviews, we describe facilitators' experiences, challenges, and learnings from their first experience as design facilitators. We found that novice facilitators employed many strategies to overcome initial discomfort. In particular, they attempted to incite conversation through side channels and cold-calling, and leveraged improvisation strategies to deal with unexpected situations. They also relied on support structures to make in-the-moment decisions. Our findings suggest that the design facilitators found their experiences meaningful for both their personal growth and for advancing their career aspirations.