Newspaper Article Workshop: inspire your team to find their ‘why’

Imagine a famous newspaper was to write an article about the impact of your team’s work in 5 years' time. What would it say?

Published in

UX Collective

4 min readApr 22, 2022

An image of an old-style newspaper with orange paper. It shows an article containing a headline, the main text and a quote. The headline says “Newspaper Article Team Workshop”. The text says “You’ve launched your product. What’s the big headline? It’s time to become a journalist — just for now: It’s been 5 years since the Technology Company first launched This Incredible App. Ever since, nothing is the same. People suddenly get their jobs done — and well! Who’d thought that!”

When was the last time your team stepped back and reflected on why you’re doing what you’re doing? This workshop is a great way to bring your team up to that 10.000 feet view. Every team member gets to be a journalist and write their own version of this big story.

This image contains a quote in handrwiting, saying: “Riiight, this is why we’re doing this.”

Outcome

Find your ‘why’ …

This workshop helps envision the best possible future for your team/project/product. It uncovers different possibilities and helps to find your teams’ why.

… in a fun way

Run this workshop when you want to probe smiling faces and laughter. It’s one of the workshops where people come to you afterwards and say: “that was fun!”. Some participants get really creative and put a fun spin on their article. Each person has a different perspective on why the product matters.

“Huge thanks for driving this workshop. It’s a creative way to align our vision. We need to run this workshop with all our product teams!” — Luisa, Head of Product

A collage of 4 images, all related to a newspaper. Image one: a man sits on a bench and reads a newspaper. Image two: a sticker on a pillar saying “good news is coming”. Image three: a printing press, printing a newspaper. Image four: oldstyle, metal letters, used in printers before digital printing was invented.

Who can run it?

The only qualification so to say is that your team needs to work towards something. A digital product, an event, a new branch opening, anything. I like to run this workshop with software teams, to get them excited about the impact the product will have.

When best to run it?

You can run this workshop on different occasions. Before a new idea even gets funding, at a project kickoff as well as a few months into a project. The articles might differ in accuracy but the effect is the same.

How to run the workshop

The concept is simple. Everyone writes a newsletter article about the project/product —pretending it’s 5 years from now. Headline, main article and perhaps a quote, some people like to add an image — no limits to creativity here.

Agenda

⇢ 5 min: explain how it works
⇢ 10 min: silent writing
⇢ 15 min: everyone reads their story

Prep-work

Skip the prep work using this Miro Template.

This workshop is equally impactful when held in person. You’ll want to have desks around, as you’ll be writing. You will also need a large whiteboard with magnets to pin the articles afterwards. Provide everyone with 2–3 large pieces of paper (A3 if you can, else A4), a very thick marker for the headline and a regular one for the article.

During the workshop

Every person writes their name on top. Then onto the actual article. It can be easier to write the article first, and the headline last. Adding quotes, images or emojis aren’t a must but you can mention them for inspiration.

Pro-tips

Don’t let participants be held back by language. I like to encourage people that it’s not about correct grammar, or an elaborate writing style. This helps, in particular when folks are doing this workshop in their second language.

Don’t force people to share their stories. Perhaps they’re having a bad day and didn’t find the words they were looking for. Ask for volunteers instead.

Adjust your agenda to the number of participants. Got 4 people in the room? You won’t need 15 mins to share out. Got a full house with say, 12 participants? You’ll want to plan 2–3 mins time to share per participant.

Tweak the year. I initially ran this workshop with an article to be published 1 year in the future. One participant thought I said 10 years and their article was even more inspiring. I’ve since changed the standard to 5 years.

A tag, saying in handwriting: “It’s July 2023 (crossed trough), July 2030. An open marker plus the lid lie to the right”

Contributors

This workshop isn’t new. It has been around for some time. I think it should be in every facilitator’s repertoire. I haven’t yet seen it put together on a visually appealing Miro board, so I designed the template. If you’re interested in this workshop method, read about how others run it. My favourite versions are from gamestorming and pipdecks.