Sketch Jam Kickoff

Often we find frogs tend to have a wide range of skills and interests. When they aren’t working tirelessly to produce innovative solutions for clients, frogs are searching for ways to hone their creative skills and learn a few new tricks that lie outside of their specialized expertise. Wanting to create an environment that promoted a culture of playfulness and tinkering, Senior Interaction designers Mitch Murphy and Ahmed Riaz started Sketch Jam, a forum for frogs to learn and practice a range of creative skills through sketching on paper, with form, in code or with video. 

Sketch Jam is based on the idea that everyone, regardless of skill or experience, can benefit from having a space to tinker, play, experiment and practice design sketching. Design sketches are sets of simple yet powerful artifacts designers create in order to solve problems or explore opportunities, a medium that can benefit anyone working creatively.

Each ‘Jam’ is to be a self contained exercise in coming up with a simple powerful exploration that can propel a design forward. It’s a exercise for our minds and hands and time for frogs to play with new techniques mediums and and styles of sketching. The goal is for participants at any level of experience to attend any sketch jam session, continually practicing new skills that can benefit them in tacking their project challenges. The first Sketch Jam harkened back to the days of doodling in your notebook, teaching the anatomy  of the perfect stick figures. frogs in a variety of different roles - program managers, operation team members, technologists - came out, eager to put their designer hats on. You can check out pics from the first Sketch Jam (below) and look out for recaps of upcoming Jams that might spark some ideas for new creativity tools you can bring to your own organization.