Design Studios

What are Design Studios for product designers, and how to join or start one.

Design Studios

Design Studios (or just Studios) are regular meetings for product designers to connect and work together. These meetings aren’t limited to specific teams - any product designer can join.

They provide casual time for socializing, sharing work, getting feedback, and more. They help fill the gap between async and larger sync meetings. With just a few designers meeting together, we can build better personal and work relationships. This should also help us work better together outside these meetings.

To track issues related to these meetings, use the Design studios label.

Background

After a successful first pilot for designers in EMEA time zones, we expanded to more time zones with several volunteer hosts. We even had an in-person Studio at Summit 2024! We learned a lot and wrote this guide so everyone could learn about them. For more details, see the 2024-02-21 UX Showcase: recording and slides.

Who can join

Studios are only for Product Design individual contributors (not managers). They’re meant to be a safe space where we only share materials with other product designers. We discussed including managers but were worried that fewer people would participate. Hosts are responsible for sharing relevant discussions more widely while keeping people anonymous when needed. See issues related to the Studios.

How to join

As a product designer, your attendance is optional, but Studios work better when more people join, so please come if you can!

You’re invited to all available Design Studios — choose the one that work best for you. They’re also on the UX calendar.

Start a new Studio

Want to help start a new Studio? Great! Thanks for your interest.

Before adding a new Studio, please contact us to discuss the need for a new Studio and ways to make it successful.

Steps to start a new Studio

Follow these steps after getting approval:

  1. Set up agenda:
    1. Duplicate template.
    2. Follow instructions in the template.
  2. Create Zoom meeting:
    1. Open Zoom app and select Meetings from the top bar.
    2. On the left sidebar, select the ⊕ icon to schedule a meeting.
    3. Set the topic to ✨ Design studio <YOUR_STUDIO_NUMBER>. Replace <YOUR_STUDIO_NUMBER> based on the scheduling order of the other Studios (check your calendar or the UX calendar). This follows the multi-session meeting naming.
    4. Set date, time, and 50-minute duration.
    5. Make it weekly with no end date.
    6. Leave attendees empty (they’ll be added in calendar).
    7. Security: Enable passcode, disable waiting room, select “GitLab Internal Only” in Only authenticated users can join.
    8. Under Calendar, select “Other Calendars”, as you’ll add the meeting URL the calendar invite.
    9. Advanced Options: Allow participants to join anytime, add any co-hosts.
    10. Save and copy your Zoom link (screenshot).
  3. Set up calendar event:
    1. In the UX calendar, open an existing Studio event.
    2. Select the ⋮ icon, and then Duplicate.
    3. Update the Studio number in the title
    4. Set the same weekday and time as your Zoom meeting.
    5. Set to repeat weekly.
    6. In the Location, add your Zoom link you got in the previous step.
    7. The guest list should already include all product designers.
    8. To attach your new agenda document, remove the existing attachment and then select the Google Drive icon.
    9. Save!

What next?

  1. Announce the new Studio in the #ux and #ux_coworking Slack channels.
  2. Another host will try to join your first session to provide support.
  3. Check the feedback survey responses.

Measure success

We measure success in two main ways:

  1. Anytime: Attendees can give feedback through the anonymous survey shared on every call.
  2. Quarterly review: We look more closely at several aspects:
    1. We encourage attendees to complete the anonymous feedback survey, and we then review their responses.
    2. Attendees can join a retrospective discussion. See all retrospective issues.
    3. We report attendee satisfaction and attendance numbers in the retrospective issue.

Contact

For questions or suggestions, contact a maintainer listed on the right side of this page.

Last modified June 12, 2025: Update link for `Design studios` label (f9c4db8f)
View page source - Edit this page - please contribute. Creative Commons License