User experience fishbowl
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This was the first Liberating Structure that I encountered, although I may not have recognized it as such. At UX London 2016, I had the good fortune to listen to Marc Rettig give a talk and then a workshop called “Dialogue facilitation: a tool for research and team impact”. People lingered in the room after the workshop, a bit stunned and unwilling to let go of the intimacy that we’d just experienced. This experience left a very strong impression on me.
In practice
User experience fishbowl is brilliant for creating an inviting space for people to express “their side of the story” with no expectation or responsibility to offer insights or lessons from it. This is the job of everyone else, whose capacity for listening expands exponentially thanks to this split in roles.
A few scenarios that I’ve used it for:
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For a group to download different perspectives in order to untangle a sticky situation. It’s especially great to amplify the quieter or less articulate voices.
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For an audience of varied backgrounds and skill levels to learn from a small subgroup that has specific expertise or experiences. This allows for the subgroup to share wisdom without having to “perform” or prepare content.
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As an optimal way to collect learnings via multiple fishbowls run in parallel on different subjects. Each fishbowl reports back insights that were abstracted from the specific stories, for the room to decide on a collective path forward.
Fishbowl can be done as an online exercise but I find that the mechanics of video software render it too close to the dynamic of “passing the mic around”. This is useful in its own right but to me, it’s not the point of User Experience Fishbowl.
Workshop design notes
Any harvesting activity that comes after the Fishbowl is best led by someone with strong synthesis and facilitation skills. I’ve seen cases where people were astounded by the richness of what came out of the Fishbowl and then let down by what the same group of people managed to do afterward because they were left too much to their own devices. Once the Fishbowl is over, it is time for the facilitator to take the lead again.
This entry is part of Liberating Structures Field Notes, my collection of stories and reflections from the field. It's written for people who already know LS and are deepening their practice. If you're just getting started and looking for activity instructions, you'll find them at liberatingstructures.com..
