It's time to harness the power of sketching to ideate, iterate, and communicate.
Practice
Sketching is an easily overlooked skill for developers yet the benefits that sketching brings cannot be overstated. Sketching helps with brainstorming ideas, iterating through concepts, and communicating your ideas to others. Whether working individually or in a group, your ability to sketch helps take the abstract ideas out of heads and into the real world. If you’re not comfortable sketching then there is little chance that your ideas will stick with you, your team members, and even your clients. Don’t worry—the confidence you need to put your pen to paper and start to sketch is close at hand! With the addition of a few simple approaches to your daily routine, you too can harness the power of sketching.
Key Takeaways:
- Anyone can sketch. Yes, you too!
- Understand the benefits of sketching and why it is a critical part of the design process
- Learn specific techniques to power up your sketching skills
- See the power of sketching firsthand by taking part in sketching activities
Come prepared to do fun sketching activities in this hands-on talk so you can experience the power of sketching firsthand.
This hands-on talk is geared for all skills. No previous sketching experience is necessary.
Participants will experience the power of sketching firsthand by taking part in the fun sketching exercises. They will see that incorporating sketching into their workflow will help them come up with better and well thought out ideas. They will also practice sharing their ideas with fellow participants. This helps them get comfortable sharing their ideas by using sketches.
Sketching workbook
Post-It notes
Pens
My hands-on talk is structured to provide some background about sketching and how it helps to ideate, iterate, and collaborate. I then jump into the sketching exercises.
Exercise 1: Warmup
Exercise 2: Spontaneous Sketching
- Introduction to the exercise
- There are 6 prompts to sketch with less time for each prompt. The first prompt time is 2 minutes to sketch. For the last prompt the participants have just 5 seconds to sketch.
- Share the sketches with the person next to them. This helps people meet new people in a fun way and make the conference more exciting. It also helps them see the power of sketching to collaborate and share ideas.
Exercise 3: Rapid Sketching
- Introduction to the exercise
- There are 10 prompts to sketch. The participants have 10 seconds to sketch concepts like love, weather, sharing etc.
- Share the sketches with the person next to them. This helps participants see the power of sketching to collaborate and share ideas.
Exercise 4: 10 Circles
- Introduction to the exercise
- The worksheet for this exercise has 10 empty circles on it. The participants have 30 seconds to fill in each circle. A buzzer sounds after 30 seconds letting them know that it's time to move to the next circle. The goal of this exercise is to get the participants in the habit of getting their ideas out quickly and providing constraints of time and space.
- Share the sketches with the person next to them. This helps participants see the power of sketching to collaborate and share ideas.
00:00 - 00:10 - Introduction
00:10 - 00:25 - Meet the person next to you, Exercise 1: Warmup
00:25 - 00:40 - Exercise 2: Spontaneous Sketching
00:40 - 00:55 - Exercise 3: Rapid Sketching
00:55 - 00:65 - Exercise 4: 10 Circles
00:65 - 00:75 - Review, Q&A
The participants will have their workbooks to take with them.
I have presented this workshop at Mobiconf 2016 (Krakow), Booster Conference 2017 (Bergen), AppDevCon 2017 (Amsterdam)