workshop options
10 years of running workshops in 10 countries


Workshops provide incredible feedback loops
The workshop setting is where I can interact directly with students as well as refine content and delivery. Over the course of the past decade, I've run workshops in 10 countries and interacted with thousands of students. I've also continually refined the workshop structure as well as expanded the offerings. I currently run three different workshop formats: sketching in space, sketching in time, and a composite 2-day workshop called visualizing the future. The concept for the last workshop format comes from a month-long course run with industrial designer Matthew Burger at the Bauhaus Univerisität in Weimar Germany. There we experimented with visualizing future technology and scenarios.

I am always open to customizing the workshops to meet the needs of schools, companies, and organziations. Since launching a Design Thinking online course in 2018, I've begun incorporating many of the workflows and visualizations used to help teams work on complex ideas collaboratively including journey, empathy, and stakeholder mapping, storyboarding, wireframing, paper prototyping, and many other methods. I see the future of the design profession as a mix of high-level strategic visualizations combined with detailed conceptualizations that span the gamut from artifact to ephemeral experience.
Feedback loop
After every workshop, it's customary to send out a google survey to participants to get their input. The surveys are designed not only to solicit direct feedback from the workshop they took but also to solicit feedback about how best they learn. For example, the workshops rely heavily on short videos and animations to help visually explain key ideas. Knowing if these resources are effective is critical to another initiative: designing interactive resources for the iPad.

In 2018, I launched a learning company called The Fourth Teacher. The website will go live in March. The goal of the company is to provide media-rich resources to augment the work of a teacher, coach, or professor.
lo-fi sketching
Sketching-in-time is one way to think about visualizing experiences (UX). The  methods for doing this range broadly from mapping to diagramming, wireframing, storyboarding, paper prototyping, or simply writing a compelling user experience in the form of a story.

Teaching students to solve time-based problems, is a great primer for moving to more traditional methods of sketching as the elements: point/vertex, line/edge, and plane/surface are the same. This simple DNA of visualization can be used across a broad range of outputs connecting disparate activities.  
conversational sketching
Sketching together is a form of conversation. Providing students with the skills to get ideas out quickly so that others can respond and build on them creates a conversational dynamic. This approach was pioneered by Donald Schön in his book: The Reflective Practitioner.

When we talk we don't precompose our thoughts but rather shape them as we go responding to the thoughts, questions, and gestures of those we're working with. Such a dynamic can support both larger-scale thinking as well as more detailed approaches to concept development
product sketching
Sketching objects in space comes down to understanding the fundamentals of perspective (500-year old technology). Those fundamentals are very accessible when explained and demonstrated in a simplified hands-on approach combined with exercises designed to build confidence over time.

This rapid ideation sketch does not need to take an hour to create or, for that matter, does it need to be 100% accurate. Sketching is about speed and quantity. In order to create quantity, it's important to understand multiple strategies for generating ideas.
Contact Me
drawingforproductdesigners@gmail.com

847 418 1443

1207 Michigan Avenue
Evanston
Illinois 60202
I can send a workshop brochure with all the information. I am always happy to customize a workshop for specific desired outcomes. If you are interested in discussing any details please email me and put workshop in the subject line. Thanks.