How is this different from facilitation techniques?

Techniques are the individual moves — think-pair-share, silent writing, breakouts. Interaction design is the decision layer above them: which one, for what purpose, and where it sits in the session. Knowing ten techniques doesn't help if they're placed arbitrarily.

How much interaction should a session have?

There's no fixed ratio. The useful question is whether the group needs to do something at that point for the session to reach its outcome. If the answer is no, input is fine — and often better.

Should interaction be spread evenly through the day?

No. Even distribution is a scheduling habit, not a design choice. Cluster interaction where the real thinking happens — the parts where the group has to generate, decide or commit — and keep the connecting sections tight.

What if the group has low energy — isn't an activity the fix?

Sometimes, but energy is a symptom. If the room is flat because there's been too much input, changing who does the work helps. If it's flat because the session isn't going anywhere they care about, an activity just adds movement to a session with no destination.

Resource — the Interaction pillar

FACILITATION INTERACTION DESIGN

Interaction design is matching the type and amount of participation to what each part of the session actually needs — not sprinkling activities through the day to keep energy up. Two sessions can have identical amounts of interaction and only one of them reaches a decision.

Purpose first

INTERACTION HAS A JOB BEYOND ENERGY.

Generating options, narrowing to a decision and building buy-in are three different needs. They call for different formats, and using the wrong one quietly works against the outcome.

Generating options

You want volume and range, so the format should protect independent thinking before conversation — individual writing, silent generation, small groups working separately. Open plenary discussion is the worst choice here: the first three ideas set the frame for everything after them.

Narrowing to a decision

Now you want compression, not more ideas. Formats that force choices work — ranking, dot voting, forced trade-offs, small groups told to bring back two options rather than eight. Interaction that keeps expanding at this point makes the decision harder, not better.

Building buy-in

Buy-in comes from people saying things out loud themselves, so the interaction has to put words in participants' mouths, not the facilitator's — stating their own objection, describing what they'd do on Monday, testing the decision against their own context.

Shane McGrath working through a session structure — Designing the shape, not the activities

Pacing

CLUSTER IT WHERE THE THINKING HAPPENS.

Interaction across a full session shouldn't be evenly spaced. Most sessions have two or three moments that genuinely carry the outcome — the point where options get generated, the point where a choice gets made, the point where people commit to doing something differently. Those deserve the longest, best-designed participation, with enough time to be done properly rather than sampled.

Everything else is connective tissue and can be shorter and lighter. This is why cutting an activity is often the right call: protecting the time for the parts that matter beats getting through everything at a pace where nothing lands. When you plan, mark the two or three moments first and build the rest around them — the same backwards-from-the-outcome logic that governs workshop design generally.

The failure mode

INTERACTION FOR ITS OWN SAKE.

The most common design mistake isn't too little participation — it's participation with no relationship to the outcome.

Fun, but detached

An activity people enjoy that produces nothing the session uses afterwards. It rates well on the feedback form and moves the outcome nowhere.

Discussion as default

"Let's discuss that in your groups" used as a filler. Without a specific question and a required output, group discussion reliably produces the loudest person's view.

Complexity as a signal

If an exercise takes three minutes to explain, that's information. Elaborate formats usually serve the facilitator's interest in the format, not the room's need.

Questions

COMMON QUESTIONS.

Keep reading

DESIGN THE PARTICIPATION, DON'T HOPE FOR IT.

Facilitation training works on interaction as a design skill — choosing formats for purpose, sequencing them across a session, and cutting the ones that don't earn their time.

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