Sketch Sessions: Make Friends and Design Better

Sketch sessions are an easy collaborative process for generating diverse design ideas. My friend AJ introduced me to them and they’ve been a big hit at AppNexus.

It’s basically getting a lot of people (Designers, developers, product managers, sales, support, etc) into a room, and working alone, together. You share a problem with everyone, they sketch for 5–10 minutes and then share what they created.

Why should you do one?

There are many benefits to sketch sessions:

• They generate a lot of ideas.
• The ideas are often more diverse than what you’d come up with on your own.
• Leading a sketch session shows some of the value that design can bring beyond visual design.
• It helps everyone feel heard, and feel like they have ownership over the final idea.
• It helps break down barriers across roles and increase communication (even outside of the session!).
• A unicorn gets its horn every time a sketch session happens. 🐴 ➡️ 🦄

When should you do one?

• When you’re stuck and unable to come up with a bunch of ideas
• When you’re working with a new team and need to build trust and communication
• When you’re working with stakeholders who don’t understand what designers do
• When you need to ‘show some leadership’ (Something my managers asked me to do when I was a junior designer)

Sold? Here’s how to do it!

Document the goal of the project and tasks the user will be doing

• I usually talk to the product manager for this part
• The goal should, ideally, be measurable. For example “Cut time to create a campaign by 10%” or “Increase conversions by 5%”
• Try to not have too many tasks other wise everyone will design for different parts. I’ve found 1–5 related tasks to be manageable.

Figure out a hypothesis (Or maybe two or three!)

• Now that you have a goal, what would move the product in the right direction?
• Hypothesis can be broad or specific. For example: “A more visual product will lead to more users returning” or “Hiding some of the options will make it easier for users to focus”
• If you have multiple hypotheses the “repeat” part of the process will be slightly different, and is described below

Document the Goal, Tasks and Hypothesis somewhere that you can easily share during the session

• I like paper.dropbox.com because the UI is super minimal ✨ and doesn’t distract from the content
• If you’re co-located with everyone you could also write it up on a white board.

Figure out who your stakeholders are and invite them to a 45 minute meeting

• Try to have diverse (rolls, perspectives etc) participants
• This is a good time for new people to work with UX since it’s very structured and fun
• This is the email invite I use for people who have been in one before.

Subject: Sketch Session: Ad Unit Manager

Hey All,
Come sketch out some ideas for the placement manager.

Haven't been to a sketch session before? It’s simple, here’s how they work:

1. I’ll explain the process and mention the goal and the hypothesis of the project
2. We’ll all have 5 minutes to sketch out a bunch of ideas
3. We’ll then share our ideas on vidyo and explain what’s going on in them
4. Then another sketching round so people can riff on ideas.
5. Another round of sharing
6. Then I’ll collect all of the sketches to take parts of them to higher fidelity.

You can read about the tasks and goals ahead of time, if you’re interested

Prepare for the meeting

• Book meeting rooms for whomever needs them. My company is distributed, so it’s usually one in San Francisco, one in New York and one in Portland. (And before you ask, yes we’re all a bunch of hipsters)
• Make sure people have, or know to bring, pens and paper
• Make sure someone in each room can take photos of the sketches for sharing

Run the Meeting

• Introduce the task, and give a brief overview of the session.
• If people don’t know each other have everyone introduce themselves
• Share your goal, hypothesis, and tasks somewhere visible (I screen-share the Dropbox Paper doc) and walk through them to make sure everyone understands.
• Start the first round — Set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes
• After the timer goes off, everyone takes photos and uploads them to the most convenient location. (We use Slack)
• Suggest people take notes during the sharing to capture their favourite ideas
• I then share Slack on our video conference tool. Your best method for sharing may be different. But what is important is that everyone focuses on one sketch at a time and the artist gets to explain what they did and why.
• Repeat! (If you have more than one hypothesis this is when you’d switch)
• If you have a lot of sketches spend a few minutes asking people for their favourites. Document the sketches somewhere accessible so that you or anyone else can refer them

Bask in the glow of a successful sketch session

Let me know how it goes!