18F
18F - Design Studio
This exercise, from 18F, gets everyone designing together, regardless of role or drawing skills. It turns abstract ideas into visuals teams can discuss and refine. Sketching forces specificity. By the end, you'll have multiple design directions grounded in constraints and team input.
Duration
1.5 hours
Group Size
6-12
Category
18F
Difficulty
Easy
- Generate design concepts quickly through sketching.
- Create shared understanding across disciplines.
- Surface hidden assumptions and constraints early.
- Build on each other's ideas through iteration.
- Design studio output with concepts.
- Rapid collaborative design.
- Multiple directions explored.
Start by stating drawing skills don't matter. Show a terrible sketch as an example. It's about communication. Boxes and arrows work. Enforce silence during individual sketching to prevent groupthink. Time pressure prevents perfectionism. If energy drops, take breaks. If debates get heated, refocus on the challenge. People will want to prototype on computers; don't let them. Developers often sketch impossible things - that's useful information. Photograph everything and send photos within 24 hours with next steps. I've found that if people sketch the same thing, you probably need more diverse perspectives or clearer constraints.
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