Let’s be honest. Nobody likes long meetings. It’s dangerously easy to have two hours of aimless waffle with few actionable outcomes.

In their incredible book ‘rework’, 37 Signals (the creators of Basecamp) advise that productive meetings need to happen ad-hoc in the workplace. This allows collaboration at the source of a problem, instead of being locked away in a meeting room. We love this approach, and it’s a mentality we like to take once we’re well underway with the design process.

But what about at the outset, before we’ve gotten started?

Sometimes we need everyone together in one place, at one time. In these early stages, time must be taken to understand our clients’ requirements and get the whole team aligned with the product’s goals.

This is why we start each new project with a kick-off workshop.