Barbara Alisber
Clarity is Strategy
Designing a Scalable Workshop Experience
2023 - 2025
Client:
Bonny Morlak - Startup Growth Coach
Type:
Experience Design, Workshop Product Design
Role:
Product Manager & Experience Designer
Focus:
Designing and scaling a live Ikigai-based workshop experience
Stage:
Pilot workshop at Canva Space Sydney
Designing a live Ikigai workshop as a product
Clarity is Strategy: Find Your Professional North Star is a 2.5-hour evening workshop created by startup coach Bonny Morlak to help founders, creatives, and professionals find direction through the Japanese concept of Ikigai.
Our goal was to turn his previously informal university sessions into a cohesive, premium, and emotionally engaging live product.
The challenge
Bonny's previous Ikigai sessions delivered powerful insight but lacked structure and design consistency.
Venues felt improvised, visuals were scattered, and the experience didn't fully reflect his depth as a coach.
We needed to redesign the entire journey from first touchpoint to in-room experience so it felt intentional, calm, and premium.
The Opportunity
Treat the workshop like a startup product:
design the end-to-end experience using UX and service design principles, so it can be repeated, measured, and eventually scaled into courses and future formats.
What We Did
I led the product and experience design for the pilot workshop: mapping the journey, designing the environment, creating the workbook and tools, and shaping the marketing and launch funnel.
1.Research & Insights
Reviewed feedback and field notes from earlier university sessions, identifying what worked emotionally and where structure broke.
We found that room layout, sensory cues, and visual storytelling had a direct impact on engagement and depth of reflection.
2.Product & Journey Design
Mapped the full journey from persona and outreach to sign-up, arrival, in-room flow, and post-event follow-up. We defined six core phases for the evening and designed each moment to balance introspection, interaction, and clarity.
3.Environment & Experience Design
Designed the spatial layout, lighting, music, workbook, and tactile tools such as magic wand pencils.
On the day, we adapted to the available furniture, shifting to a cafe-style layout that made conversation and connection feel natural.
4.Marketing & Launch
Created a landing page, Eventbrite listing, and Meta + organic campaigns under a tight budget.
We filled all 24 seats through a mix of ads, partnerships, and personal outreach, validating the concept and price point.
Key Insights
The workshop proved that treating experiences like products testing, iterating, and designing every touchpoint creates more meaningful, scalable offerings for both founders and participants.
Experiences Are Products
Environment Is Part of the UX
Structure Enables Depth
Marketing and Experience Must Match
Designing a workshop as a product with journeys, feedback loops, and value propositions creates a repeatable, testable format instead of a one-off event.
Lighting, seating, sound, and pacing changed how safe people felt to share.
The room layout became as critical as the slides.
A clear arc from arrival to closing reflection gave participants enough safety and momentum to reach honest, actionable clarity about their direction.
Positioning the workshop as calm, strategic, and human set expectations that the in-room experience then fulfilled, strengthening trust in the brand.
These insights now inform future versions of Clarity is Strategy from self-paced courses to scaled workshop formats.
Impact
For Participants
- Participants left with a written North Star statement, clearer language for their professional direction, and a calm, grounded feeling instead of overwhelm.
For the Business
- The pilot proved there is demand for a structured, premium version of the workshop and laid the foundation for an online course and future live offerings.
For My Practice
- This project reinforced how UX, service design, and facilitation blend into one craft: designing spaces where people can see themselves more clearly.