Twelve founders arrived at the SayDay workshop with polished decks and a confident explanation of how their product would work. By the end of the session, half of those assumptions were gone. Not because they were wrong — because actually getting up and walking through the experience with their bodies revealed problems that weeks of screen-based thinking had completely missed.
This is what bodystorming does. And if you've never tried it, it looks slightly absurd from the outside — a room full of adults pretending to stand in a queue or mime checking a phone notification. It feels less absurd the moment someone plays a "confused user" and the designer realises they have no idea how to explain their own product out loud.
What we actually did
The session was built around three early-stage startups, each at a different point in their development. Teams had five minutes to brief the room on their concept, then set up a physical space — using chairs, tables, tape on the floor, and a handful of props — to represent the context their product lives in.
Then they ran the scenario. One team member played the product. Others played customers, bystanders, or obstacles. The founder watched and took notes. No screens allowed.
12 participants · 3 projects tested · 2 hours total
What came up
The hospital wayfinding app
One team was building an app to help patients navigate a large hospital. The product looked clean. Every screen made sense in Figma. When we bodystormed the same journey — one founder as a stressed patient, another playing a nurse with no time to stop, a third as an overstimulated waiting room — the team discovered their app assumed the user had two free hands. Most people moving through a hospital are carrying something. That observation became the centrepiece of their next sprint.
"I kept trying to act out tapping the screen and realised I'd been holding a bag and a coffee the whole time. It just never occurred to me when I was designing it at my desk."
— Wei-Ting, co-founder
The secondhand goods marketplace
The second startup — a peer-to-peer platform for buying and selling secondhand goods between young professionals — hit a different kind of problem. The handoff moment between buyer and seller, which the app handled with a single confirmation screen, turned out to be genuinely awkward in physical space. Neither "character" knew who was supposed to speak first. The founder hadn't designed for the social layer at all. The bodystorm made it visible in about 90 seconds.
The startup that held up
The third team, building a food pickup notification system for office buildings, had a good experience. Their bodystorm revealed no major problems — which is also useful information. They left with confidence they'd earned, not assumed.
What worked, and what we'd do differently
The setup time matters more than it seems. Teams that took five minutes to properly mark out their physical space — tape on the floor for walls, a chair for a counter, someone holding a piece of card as a door — got much more out of the exercise than teams that tried to shortcut it. The props create commitment. Without them, people drift back into talking about the design instead of acting in it.
The one thing we'd change: giving the "user" character a specific emotional state at the start. "You are running late and your phone battery is at 8%" produces much richer behaviour than "you are a typical user." Constraints make the scenario real.
"I didn't expect it to feel embarrassing. But the awkward bit — where nobody knew what to do — that was actually the most useful thing that happened all day."
— Marcus, founder, attended as part of a startup validation programme
Try it yourself
Bodystorming works at any stage of a project, but it is especially good before you've built anything. If you're a founder with an idea, the bodystorming method guide walks you through how to set it up — no experience needed.
SayDay connects you with real people to test your idea. Get started.
Tags: bodystorming · design thinking · taipei workshop · startup validation · user research · early-stage founders