Sketching Design Studio Page Patterns
EightShapes has recently gotten into the groove of facilitating sketching workshops for our clients, rapidly creating new visions for design systems and web applications by inviting together a multi-disciplinary group.
With incalculably valuable input from Todd Zaki Warfel of Messagefirst, we constructed two back-to-back full day sessions. We divided our group into multi-disciplinary teams of 4 (or 5) each, constructed three scenarios each of which were explored across multiple rounds.
We used our EightShapes Unify documentation system to communicate critical aspects of the very full day. While we may do some more extensive writing on the subject (or, better, you could attend training like the great workshop facilitated by Todd and Leah Buley of Adaptive Path), here’s a glimpse at some deliverable page layouts and sketching sheets you can use in your own practice, through EightShapes Unify.
You can also download the PDF and EightShapes Unify Snippets of these page patterns, which will be included in our next release.
Teams
We structure our workshop group into teams of optimally 4, intentionally mixing up different disciplines such as an interaction designer, engineer, product manager, and customer support representative.
Plan
No one in the room had ever participated in a sketching design studio before, so we had to break down the day for them, first by looking at the day from a high-level, talking about each round of sketching, and also teaching them about how reviews (presentations followed by critique) work.
Scenario Sheets
Scenario sheets were invaluable, and contrary to our instinct, providing more detail actually proved helpful to the participants. We including details like:
- Description, as one line, to set the tone of what they are to do.
- Assumptions, if any, to ground participants in what they can assume has already been established or performed by the user.
- Trigger, confirming what the user has just done before arriving at what you are sketching.
- End, where the user concludes or goes to next AFTER what you’ve sketched.
- Objectives, in terms of user needs and what you hope to achieve or enhance with the design.
- Design Requirements that detail what exactly you are supposed to design.
- Optional Requirements that enable participants to explore different ideas or areas of interest. In our case, one scenario was of a new model for a complex UI, and there were lots and lots of properties and interactions they could explore. So we grounded them with core features, and then let them choose more details to layer in time permitting.
- What NOT To Do. While a bit tiresome at times, we felt it necessary to direct participants away from certain failed, undesirable directions or even to reinforce that they shouldn’t sketch what they’ve already built and are redesigning.
Scenario Target Profiles
For one client, they were particularly sensitive to divergent needs across different target profiles that they’d defined that were not far from baseline personas. Therefore, we assigned different target profiles to each team to see how the designs looked different based on those different user needs. It worked! The range of design concepts were dramatically different, illustrating that a one-size-fits-all approach is not going to address anyone’s needs.
Sketching Sheets
Ultimately, the workshop is about putting pen to paper. As such, we provided four different types of sketching sheets for participants to start with. It was interesting that, given freedom of choice, you couldn’t really predict which type of sheet someone would want from round to round. As the day wore on and comfort levels increased, we also found participants going with plain, unlined paper as well as tearing up their sheets and creating paper prototypes too!
Note that to use these sheets, use the letter landscape deliverable and assign the page the “[None]” master.
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1 with Annotations
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This is fantastic. We are starting to do these within our organization as well. I have been tweaking the structure and it is very much the same as yours. However, I hadn’t thought of doing the details on the scenario sheet like your team has. Something I think I’m going to add.
Thanks for sharing!
[...] of supplies (graph paper, sharpies, pencils, food). When I first started having design jams, I used Eight Shapes’ design studio template. The team is now familiar with the process so we review each user story together and then jump [...]