Ben Shih, Community Lead at UX East Meets West, was tired of all the awkward silences in his remote workshops. He found it difficult to keep his audience of 90+ participants focused and energized as he bounced back and forth between tools and browser tabs.

But now, with Butter, Ben feels more in control running his workshops all from one tool—without the constant need for tab switching. His participants are also way more engaged thanks to Butter’s emoji reactions and super-fun sound effects—making his workshops lively, engaging, and delightful!

Challenge: Tab-switching terror

UX East Meets West is an online community of hundreds of Taiwanese UX professionals. They share best practices on user experience, product design, product management, and data analytics.

They run mentorship programs, career-development workshops, networking events, and panel talks to raise the bar for UX-centric design among Taiwanese talent.

As a globally distributed community, they rely hugely on their toolset to create remote connections. Ben Shih found that Zoom wasn’t getting the level of interaction he wanted. Their facilitators had to switch between Zoom, Miro, Spotify, and YouTube—all while keeping track of their participants’ reactions and keeping them focused.

"It was frustrating when participants got lost during a session because we couldn’t control what they were looking at on their end. It's a big pain to receive cold reactions from the audience. It's so discouraging when no one reacts when you say something funny or ask a question."

Convinced there had to be a more facilitator-friendly tool than Zoom or Google Meet, Ben looked for an alternative.

Solution: Enter Butter!

Then Ben found Butter.

He was initially skeptical about introducing yet another tool to his audience, but Butter’s delightful design and simple onboarding quickly won him over. 

Here’s how Butter made Ben’s life better.

All your collaboration tools in one place

Thanks to Butter’s integration with Miro, Google Docs, YouTube, and more, Ben no longer had to jump between windows and tabs during his sessions.

“Butter enables me to do workshops with ease. It's amazing to have video calls, Miro, and my presentation slides all in one place. I never have to ask participants to switch between software and tabs anymore.”

Ben also plays YouTube songs directly within Butter to bump up the energy in his sessions.

Goodbye, awkward silences

Ben also loves Butter’s lively reaction features, as it inspires his audience to become active participants in the session.

“I love the emoji and sound-effect reactions, as participants can interact with the speakers without even speaking to them. We don’t get cold reactions anymore, as the audience can just tap on the emojis to interact.”

The reactions provide a huge lift to the speakers too, as they are encouraged by participants’ reactions from participants as they go.

“Both the speakers and the participants are super happy to use/see the emoji reactions in Butter! It makes the entire workshop a lot more interactive, happier, and smoooother!”

Delight your participants before the session

Ben loves that he can warm up his audience with a customized waiting room before his sessions.

“I love that I can customize the appearance of the waiting room and let the participants be surprised and excited before the workshop begins.”

Better moderate your breakouts

Ben’s workshops often feature over 90 participants and 20 breakout rooms, so being able to set up breakout rooms easily beforehand has been a big time saver.

“The peeking feature of the breakout rooms helps us to moderate the workshop better, as the co-facilitators can see what's going on in each room, and even join the room when there's a need.”

Results: Life’s better with Butter

Butter has helped Ben bring totally new energy to his workshops.

“I hosted an Ikigai Career Development Workshop earlier this year with more than 90 participants. We used Butter + Miro to run through this workshop. During the session, I had to create 20+ breakout rooms for the group and this can be done quickly with Butter, which helps my workshop to be smooth like Butter!

Butter was a big hit with Ben’s participants too:

“I really love that I can use stickers to give speakers some reactions when I agree with their perspectives, but don't want to interrupt them!" - Zonnie, participant

“The immediacy of the feedback is wonderful.” - YiT, participant

How to Butter with Ben: Setting up a Butter room!

Here's Ben on how he uses Butter to prepare for his facilitation sessions:

1. I always start by creating a new room with a fun name and cover image. Because we’re a group of designers, we often design our own cover for the event. Otherwise, you can use GIFs from Giphy. Here’s one of my custom covers:

‍

2. After I create a room, I customize the URL so that I can look fancy when I send it out to the invitees. I also choose my waiting room music (Butter Elevator Classic 1, always!) and a snazzy background color:

‍

3. I'm a big fan of the "Room graphics" download button that lets me export a promo banner for the event that I can share on our social accounts. It saves me a lot of time!

‍

4. After that, I plan my session by playing around with the Agenda and integrated tools.

‍

5. Finally, if it's a big workshop and I have to collaborate with more co-facilitators, I invite the co-facilitators to test out the flow and see if they’d like to change anything.

‍

Ben’s top Butter tip: “Make sure you play around with the features before your workshop sessions so you can make use of them during the session!”

--

A big thanks to Ben for sharing his Butter story!

To create your first Butter room and to start hosting better workshops, sign up for Butter for free.