3 creative sketching exercises to include in your next workshop

Engaging your team’s creative prowess is key to unlocking new ideas and uncovering solutions. To help them get there, your workshop design should include activities that encourage people to feel empowered when drawing, or suss out if an idea is worth exploring further, or get unstuck when new or different ideas just aren’t coming naturally.

Here are three sketching exercises I like to use for design workshops, and that you can borrow for your next session.

1. The “You CAN draw!” warm up

There’s a common misconception that drawing and sketching are activities reserved solely for designers and artists. Demystifying this false narrative is a key first step before a day of collaboration because it levels the playing field.

I truly believe anyone can draw and, to demonstrate that point, I share a worksheet featuring four basic shapes — square, circle, curved line, straight line. I then ask my participants to practice drawing those shapes.

Once the group has had some practice time, I then share an image of many drawings constructed entirely by the four basic shapes they’ve been working with:

I give them a chance to do a bit more doodling to practice drawing some objects and warm up. How much time I spend on this depends on how much confidence I sense the group may need to build.

This exercise illustrates that we can draw anything in the world with these four foundational shapes. Design experience is not a prerequisite for communicating ideas visually. And helping people understand drawing as a communication tool rather than as an art project is a good first step toward creating better ideas together.

2. The Crazy 8s rapid idea-generation exercise

This is a Design Sprint method I recommend using when your teams are stuck or need help exploring different versions of an idea they’re working on, like when a group is brainstorming but not really trying anything different. In just eight minutes, this activity will pull them out of their slump.

Start by folding a standard sheet of paper in half once the long way (aka hotdog style), then once the short way (aka hamburger style), and once again the short way (aka hamburger style). When you unfold and orient it horizontally, you’ll be left with eight sectioned boxes.

For this exercise, the goal is to fill all eight boxes in eight minutes by sketching out versions of 1–2 ideas. If your participants chose two ideas, have them use the four boxes in the upper row for idea #1, and the four boxes in the bottom row for idea #2. If they chose one idea, then all eight boxes will be dedicated to that stream of thought.

The benefit of this rapid-drawing exercise is that it forces people to move so quickly that they can’t afford to overthink their ideas. They end up emerging with new and different concepts that they may not have considered before (when reason or snap-judgment dismissed them).

(This is also an exercise you can use on your own to help get yourself unblocked if you’re feeling stuck.)

3. The 3-Panel Prototype exercise

This activity is a great option for teams who want to better suss out how an idea might work or come to life. I also use this method in the Design Sprints I run to support the final solution sketch.

To follow this method, have each participant fold a standard piece of paper into three sections the long way. The goal is to have them detail a picture of their idea — whether from a brainstorm or elsewhere — by using each panel to sketch out the flow of the customer/end user’s experience.

Three panels/steps is enough to get people thinking through an experience, but not so much that they’ll be overwhelmed trying to figure out all the details. I also love that the shape of the panel mimics a mobile view, which is particularly helpful if your team is working on a digital product.

A few best practices:

• Have participants draw from the customer / user / client’s point of view — what they’ll see, what they’ll interact with, etc.

• This is a sketching exercise, not a writing exercise. Any words included should be part of the experience — like copy — rather than descriptors. If they want to add a bit of annotation, that’s okay, but no more than a comic book. The experience should be obvious without needing a narrative to back it up.

Feel free to use any of these activities for your next workshop to help your teams feel more empowered, creative, and on the way toward their next great idea.