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2.
CONTENTS
build upon this work! ............... 3
INTRODUCTION: what DO
design students need? .............. 5
Using creative workshop
in a classroom setting ............ 13
Teaching the challenges:
Foundation ............................... 21
Execution .................................. 30
Materiality............................... 42
Instruction ............................... 49
Observation . ............................. 52
.
innovation ................................ 55
interpretation......................... 62
about the authors .................... 71
GET THE BOOK ............................. 72
layout based on a design by Grace Ring, HOW Design Press

3.
Build Upon this Work!
This e-book is an accompaniment to Creative
Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills,
Creative Commons License Info
published in November 2010 by HOW Design Press.
The material contained in this eBook is
The print book contains 80 creative challenges that
©2011 David and Mary Sherwin. It is offered
will help any designer reach a breadth of stronger
under a Creative Commons Attribution-
design solutions, in various media, within any set time
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
period. Exercises range from creating a typeface in
License for use internationally. The full details
an hour, to designing a paper robot in an afternoon,
of the license can be found here: http://
to designing web pages and other interactive
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
experiences. Each exercise includes compelling
visual solutions from other designers and background To quickly summarize the license:
stories to help designers increase their capacity
You are free to…
to innovate.
Share: To copy, distribute, and transmit
This e-book was written to work in concert with
the work
Creative Workshop. It is a work in progress, intended
for teachers of design & creative thinking, but it may Remix: To adapt the work
also be helpful for designers and creative managers.
Under the following conditions…
If you have any updates or improvements to the ideas
Attribution: You must attribute the work in the
contained here—or if we made a mistake—we’d love
manner specified by the author or licensor
to incorporate your input and promote your thinking
(but not in any way that suggests that they
to the greater design community. And if you’ve
endorse you or your use of the work). Please
created a challenge and tried it out with others, we’d
provide attribution back to the authors as
love to consider it for a future Creative Workshop book.
follows: “From Creative Workshop: A Teacher’s
Write us at david@changeorderblog.com.
Guide by David and Mary Sherwin, http://
www.CreativeWorkshopTheBook.com”
Noncommercial: You may not use this
To order copies or have work for commercial purposes. If you’d
Creative Workshop supplied like to, you’ll need to contact us at david@
changeorderblog.com for permission.
to your university bookstore,
Share Alike: If you alter, transform, or build
call 1-800-289-0963. You can upon this work, you may distribute the
also buy copies online at resulting work only under the same or similar
license to this one.
http://bit.ly/CWTheBook
Build Upon this Work! 3

4.
4 Exercise #

5.
Introduction: What Do
Design Students Need?
“If you want to study something, it’s better
not to know what the answer is.”
—Shunryu Suzuki, “Find Out for Yourself”
When considering the skills that today’s designers The answers we received back were surprisingly
need to be successful in today’s job market, we often consistent, and distressingly integral to the success of
focus on job requirements, which are listed in tidy any designer working today. The majority of them fell
bullet points on recruitment requests: into the following four categories:
• Experience working in Adobe Creative Suite
1. Big-Picture Ideation Planning
version du jour
the Execution
• Knows Flash, Dreamweaver, HTML5/CSS3,
Strong conceptual thinking is the root of any well-
Javascript, and more esoteric flavors of script-
crafted design execution—and the skill of creating
ing languages (and theoretically knows how
concepts through focused brainstorming is often
to create an interactive experience)
learned through mentorship or brute repetition on
• 3 -5+ years of “related” design experience
the job. Additionally, most designers discover that an
idea is meaningless if it isn’t delivered on time and
Creative Workshop, both the book and the class,
executed well. So, effective ideation requires strict
was inspired by a survey we conducted in 2008 with
time management and structure. Otherwise, we’re just
designers and creative directors with whom David
creating napkin sketches.
had worked in the past, as well as creative leaders in
the American design community whose paths we had “My experience working with young designers is
crossed. Specifically, we wanted to know what today’s that they are excited and interested in present-
creative directors and designers sought in students ing a technique. Often there is little thought
emerging from design school—what skills students behind it other than it looks cool. I prefer to
weren’t learning that could be infused back into their have the cool as the topping for a carefully
course curriculum. planned design.”
The questions in the survey were open-ended, such — endy Quesinberry, creative director and
W
as: When working with or managing other designers, principal of Quesinberry Associates
what skills do you most actively cultivate? We also
“Idea generation has become increasingly
asked for anecdotes regarding how they overcame
important to me. That means no computer!
a difficult design challenge, thereby stretching their
Just sketches and notes and scribbles and
talent and growing a practical design skill.
mood boards. These all help keep ideas from
Introduction: What Do Design Students Need? 5

6.
becoming too precious, and encourages with a willingness to share and help each
exploration of ideas. There’s something about other… It just doesn’t feel like work when you’re
sitting down and finessing an idea on the doing it right.”
computer that can make it harder to let go of
— uane King, principal of BBDK and creator of
D
an idea that’s just not working. Even when you
the design blog Thinking for a Living
know it’s not!”
“Trust is by far the most important thing. It’s
—Michel Vrana, book designer
fragile and takes time to build, but only with
trust can there be collaboration. And only with
collaboration will people help each other to
make the best ideas in the group surface.”
“Technology and — cott Berkun, author of The Myths of
S
Innovation and Making Things Happen
tools should not get in 3. Sketching Ideas
the way of your ideas. Out of all the tools available to a working designer, the
humble pencil is often the quickest method to access
The second this happens, one’s intuition. It’s often not listed as a requirement
in a job listing, but creative directors and designers
you’re screwed.” looking to hire you will listen not only to what comes
out of your mouth, but also the quality of thought
—David Conrad that you render through design sketching. Only after
considering a sketch can the design execution take
place, whether via Photoshop, code, or tempera paint.
“The ability to sketch an idea before executing
2. Collaboration Communication it is fundamental to any work environment and
to any economy. Sketching affords designers
Even for solo designers, collaboration is the lifeblood
the ability to suggest without committing to
of any professional creative endeavor—with your
marks or grids or any element of design. By
clients, with fellow designers, and with vendors that
quickly sketching out ideas, the poor ones
support fulfilling your work. But to collaborate well, you
fade quickly from priority without wasting pre-
have to squelch your ego, speak your mind, bring in
cious time to execute them. The discerning
partners from other disciplines beyond design, and
designer uses sketching to rule out as well as
know the business problems you’re trying to solve.
rule in dominant ideas about the formal ele-
“Sharing your thoughts isn’t a risk, it’s an asset. ments of any communication. It is the domain
Creative kinships with people from a wide of the sketch where the concept is nailed
variety of skill sets serve to expand your views down as well, instead of massaging more aes-
of what’s possible. Whether designers, pro- thetic details, which don’t matter one iota if
grammers, motion graphics artists, illustrators, the big idea doesn’t work.”
copywriters, or photographers, the result will
—Carrie Byrne, Creative Director, Worktank
be a mix of cultural, economic, and creative
energy that can offer true originality while test- “Technology and tools should not get in the
ing your assumptions of how things are done… way of your ideas. The second this happens,
I love to watch the sparks fly when creative you’re screwed.”
individuals meet, match wits, and inspire each
—David Conrad, Studio Director,
other. I also thoroughly enjoy participating in
Design Commission
these exchanges myself. These relationships
require honesty and a lack of ego combined
6 Introduction: What Do Design Students Need?

7.
across the table and told the client that ‘this
4. Resilience Under Pressure
site will be designed and developed with a
To quote Scott Berkun: “There is nothing like the modern, CSS-based format.’ I had no clue
impossible and the unfair to stretch your talents.” if I’d be able to pull it off. With the added
Designers who focus their energies on untangling pressure of having given my word I threw
extraordinary and seemingly intractable problems myself into the project and succeeded where
learn design fundamentals more quickly, while before I had not. I’ve never gone back to
exposing new domains for future exploration. However, table-based work since. Pressure and fear is
these kinds of “stretch” projects must be balanced an excellent motivator.”
with time for reflection, or designers will burn out.
— ndy Rutledge, Principal and Chief Design
A
“There was a time in my career when I worked Strategist, Unit Interactive
for an individual who directed a department
of a well-known agency. This was a person
How Can Students Acquire
of questionable character who overstepped
These Skills More Quickly?
boundaries in every way possible. This Devil
wore Prada. The years spent at that place Why aren’t more students graduating with these skills?
were my second college education. My but- Can these skills be taught in that setting at all?
tons were pushed. My ego was battered and
In the classroom, there may be a desire to focus on
bruised. Because of this, my creativity/problem
deep study of design fundamentals, such as typog-
solving was stretched to new levels. This was
raphy, layout, and the use of computer programs,
the most tortuous yet rewarding experience of
rather than exploring various domains of design. But
my career. Although it may not seem like it at
in analyzing the survey we’d sent out more thoroughly,
the time, being pushed beyond what you think
we realized that developing a fast-paced sequence of
is possible is the best education available.”
quick design challenges would force designers to ide-
—Jon Lindstrand, designer ate in an improvisational manner. They could illustrate
their ideas in collaboration with fellow designers, and
communicate them to a client or teacher.
Recent thinking by design educators in America is
“There is nothing like echoing this desire to create:
the impossible and “curricula characterized by flux rather than
stability; classrooms that are open and perme-
the unfair to stretch able rather than closed and finite; teaching
materials understood as participatory plat-
your talents.” forms that are modular and extensible; and
pedagogical practices founded on perceiving
the larger system rather than isolated entities
—Scott Berkun
within that system.”
— olly Willis, “Embracing Flux,” New Contexts/
H
New Practices: Six Views of the AIGA Design
“I had been studying how to design and devel- Educators Conference, edited by Julie Lasky
op web pages without using tables for layout,
It can be just as hard to effectively learn the skills I’d
instead using divs and CSS entirely, but found
identified in two- and four-year design schools as it is
it quite difficult. I always had to abandon my
in the workplace. But not all of this knowledge must
effort and go back to table-layout as I butted
come from doing graphic design projects. We’ve
up against my knowledge and skill limitations.
been following ongoing discussions on the Interaction
Shortly after starting my first job at an agency, I
Design Association’s website regarding this subject.
had a client discovery session where I looked
Diversion Media, when queried by a graduating
Introduction: What Do Design Students Need? 7

8.
student about work experience requirements for across all disciplines of design—many of extraordinary
becoming an entry-level interaction designer, complexity and difficulty. Most of the people in the
said this: class were also working full-time as designers. Most of
them had tool-based skills with the latest and greatest
“The only way to acquire all these skills is to do
software. The only stipulation was that for each chal-
projects… However they don’t all need to be
lenge in the class, they would need to turn in a pencil-
UX projects. If you’ve been a carpenter, short
based sketch of their solution, unless a computer
order cook, or theater designer you probably
execution was required.
have a lot of them already. Plus, of course,
you need to demonstrate killer deliverables, The structure of the class was not invented whole-
mastery of several software programs, and sale by the two of us. One of our first roommates
familiarity with the development process. I’d post-college was a graduate student in poetry. In
also like to know that you’ve been on at least the summer of 1999, he took a class called “Instant
one successful software project through the Thesis, or 80 Works in 7 Weeks,” which was being
full lifecycle (from whiteboard to launch). All taught by the poet Peter Klappert. The class explored
of the above is much more important than an collage methods, blot-outs, concrete poetry, metric/
arbitrary number of years...” fixed forms, linked verse, anaphora, dialogue, satire,
visual shape, collaborative writing, fixed and loose
So, every student must master new software technolo-
rhyme schemes, musicality, tone, and dozens of other
gies, old-school design theory, and production meth-
approaches. Each student was responsible for fulfilling
odologies, while fulfilling more projects. But we think
in-class and take-home exercises, as well as coming
the dirty secret is not in that a designer should spend
up with their own exercises that could be shared with
weeks or months on those projects. The projects
the class. Many students found the class to be one
should be unfair in their construction, and limited to
a transformative creative experience far beyond any
an hour or two at a time, not days or weeks.
other classes they had ever taken in college or gradu-
ate school.
With a little research, we discovered that Peter’s class
was adapted from a course taught at the Corcoran
School of Art—one where students were only allowed
“Without rules, you’ve two weeks for creating 80 artistic works! The artist
Angie Drakopoulos said this about her experience in
got no target to aim for. the Corcoran class:
Without flexibility, you “The Corcoran encouraged students to work
with many different media and explore new
haven’t the freedom to ideas. What I really learned was a way of think-
ing about art, not necessarily how to make it,
redefine the target.” but how to think about making it. One of my
favorite exercises, in my junior year, was a proj-
ect to make 80 works in two weeks. We were
—Duane King
given specific instructions on different media
that had to be used, or an idea to be incorpo-
rated, or a color, or words for a piece to refer
to. It was exhilarating; it really opened my mind
creative overload as a to the possibilities of making art. Also, because
pedagogical approach of the project’s size and deadline, you couldn’t
spend too much time on any individual work;
To prove this theory, David taught two quarter-long
so you achieved a certain degree of detach-
classes where recent graduates from design school
ment from the end result, which allowed a lot
were tasked with solving 80 creative challenges
of latent ideas and tendencies to surface. I
8 Introduction: What Do Design Students Need?

9.
think that was the first time I experienced art
as a mind-game.”
challenge
You’ve been asked to submit an
Designing Structures for Improvisation
identity design for the 2012 Olympic
Could design be approached as a similar sort of mind Games in London. The initial sketch
game, fostering a similar sense of detachment, allow- of your logo must be composed
ing intuition to bubble up from the margins? Would from a single, unbroken line. Once
it possible to cram a set of wildly divergent design you’ve placed your pen or pencil
exercises into the course of short time frame, forcing down on the paper, you can’t take it
designers to exercise the full breadth of their abili- off the page until the logo is complete. Don’t
ties in a finite period of time—learning critical skills go back for corrections—embrace mistakes!
more quickly? Would people in such an environment
become better designers at an exponentially faster
rate, with substantially better output? Almost everyone knows what the Olympics are, so a
design brief isn’t required to understand what charac-
During 2009, we worked to construct the challenges
teristics may comprise a great logo for the event.
that would serve as the foundation of this “80 Works”
class for designers. What made this a difficult challenge was the con-
straint around how you exercise a critical, almost
When considering what would comprise these
commonplace skill for any designer: sketching.
design challenges, one of Duane King’s responses to
Becoming more mindful of what ideas flow out of
our survey best summarized the spirit of our approach:
a set of intuitive pencil gestures, and using those
“There are various factors in creating an ade- gestures as finished material rather than polishing
quate space for a creative team to work within, and refining identity concepts with tighter sketches
but I tend to focus on the definition of struc- helped students begin to trust their initial ideas and
tures for improvisation, simplicity in complex- their hand-crafted nature.
ity and freedom of will. Without rules, you’ve
We also had students try out a variant where teams
got no target to aim for. Without flexibility, you
of people had to create Olympic logo ideas with a
haven’t the freedom to redefine the target.”
different constraint:
We loved the notion of “structures of improvisation”
and how it encouraged a push and pull between
take it further
rules and flexibility. We knew that each challenge
would have to combine open-ended flexibility with Get into a team of four people. Together, you will
rigid rules. The time limit for each challenge would sketch a new logo for the upcoming Olympics. The
also have to force an immediate confrontation of the design will be passed from one person to the next.
problem at hand, rather than letting solutions rumble Each person, using a permanent-ink marker or col-
around in the subconscious for a few days. ored pencil, can contribute one element to the design
at a time. If you’re crafting type, you can dot an i or
As an example, one of the first challenges David
cross a t, but only one word can be written per person
taught in the class was “One Line Logo,” which has a
(unless it’s a run-on, if you really want to bend the
30-minute time limit:
rules). Altering the paper in any way can also consti-
tute an element of your design. Keep in mind: once
you’ve started, you can’t crumple it up and start over
again. And when you’re done, your team will share
your work with the class.
Introduction: What Do Design Students Need? 9

10.
This is the opposite of the previous constraint: instead Throughout each class, the students learned to
of completing an idea in one gesture, the idea must use timeboxing both in solving individual challenges
be painstakingly communicated or collaboratively and in team collaboration, working in short sprints
created. And with only one shot to put the idea down tempered by pauses for evaluation and reflection.
on paper, the students had to be clever about inte- When solving design problems, the students
grating any mistakes into their final identity sketch. would use the first timebox as a place to use
unorthodox brainstorming methods to kickstart
This is only one example of how we constructed
their creative process.
the challenges. In the last section of this e-book,
“Teaching the Challenges,” we provide further By repeating this process over and over again—
thoughts around what makes the challenges sometimes in as little as 15 to 20 minutes—students
in Creative Workshop so, for lack of a better had a chance not only to exercise their own talents
word, challenging. under pressure, but to also gain an appreciation of
the ways fellow designers solved the same problems.
Structuring the Design Process
Needless to say, during the first few weeks the stu-
Through Timeboxing
dents struggled. They were putting in sleepless nights
In the process of brainstorming the challenges, perfecting design executions instead of following the
we realized the following: If a designer knew which skill provided class instruction and focusing on simple
they want to learn, almost any kind of problem could pencil sketches of their ideas. By the end of the class,
be designed to help them acquire it. But the way stu- however, they were exploring strong design ideas from
dents tried to solve the challenges, and the specific sketchbooks filled with possible design directions and
processes they used to arrive at a solution quickly, spending less time sweating under their deadlines
would require an explicit structure if they were going in class and at work. They learned to collaborate
to succeed in the time frames they were provided. with each other effectively; with such short deadlines,
And this structure needed to start with a designer there wasn’t time for ego. And, most importantly, they
identifying strong ideas, before she or he became explored domains of design they had never experi-
lost in the flow of polishing an executed design. enced before, which redirected many of their career
paths dramatically.
In researching and testing different design processes,
the one that stood out as an exemplary model for the You can read more about timeboxing and using light-
class was timeboxing. This technique is often used in weight brainstorming methods beginning on page 4
the world of software development, but it’s just as use- of Creative Workshop.
ful when creating design solutions. It also keeps design-
ers from moving too quickly into a design execution,
before they’ve brainstormed a broad range of ideas.
“Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost
the same as knowing what you are doing, so just
accept that you know what you’re doing even if you
don’t and do it.”
—Bre Pettis and Kyo Stark, “Cult of Done Manifesto”
10 Introduction: What Do Design Students Need?

11.
The rest of this e-book outlines how this more agile
Designing (and Teaching) with
philosophy for design instruction was implemented in
Dirty Hands
a classroom setting. It’s our hope that there is mate-
When design curricula is slow to change, and it rial from this text that you can adapt, explore, and
requires great effort to learn and understand the improve as part of your teaching efforts.
new and ever-changing technologies we must use
as designers and teachers of design, it’s tempting to
cling to what we’ve learned and “what works” as the
end-all, be-all of design practice. Yet in schools, we’re
seeking to keep our students’ hands dirty all the time.
Perhaps we’re just turning over the same plot of land.
In having taught the 80 Works class twice, and in
having solved all of the challenges in the Creative
Workshop book—some multiple times—we’ve dealt
with a lot of ambiguity in the design process, as
well as many blind spots in training and working as
a designer. It would be impossible for us to profess
expertise in many of the focus areas we tackled in
class. In many cases, constructing a challenge and
placing it in the hands of multiple designers has been
a leap of faith: sometimes leading to highly successful
and exciting design thinking, and sometimes fizzling
into a muted failure.
But in all cases, we noticed that as the class (and
by extension, the teachers) settled into not knowing
where the next turn would take us, we became more
creative and more willing to take risks. “Pretending you
know what you’re doing is almost the same as know-
ing what you are doing, so just accept that you know
what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it,” say Bre
Pettis and Kyo Stark in their “Cult of Done Manifesto.”
They add: “People without dirty hands are wrong.
Doing something makes you right.”
Flipping our fear of doing something wrong into a
desire to experiment and take risks is what we think
our student’s employers truly desire from the designers
that they hire. We should be even more purposeful in
how we cultivate these next generations of designers
with the right thinking tools.
This requires us to surprise ourselves, and by extension
our students and co-workers. Time spent teaching
tools and craft must be balanced with the time neces-
sary for students to gain tacit knowledge in ideation,
collaboration, sketching, and remaining nimble and
creative under pressure. That is, if we want students
to be employable and successful in their first roles as
designers, out in the world.
Introduction: What Do Design Students Need? 11

12.
12 Exercise #

13.
Using Creative Workshop
in a Classroom Setting
The core of a Creative Workshop class is a set of students will become faster and faster at solving chal-
instructor-provided challenges, which is then supple- lenges, so you’ll need to further shorten their dead-
mented by a set of student-created challenges. lines or increase the number of deliverables required
The teacher then constructs “story arcs” out of the as you progress.
challenges for each class (and its accompanying
No challenge should have a time limit longer than
homework assignments), conveying larger lessons
two hours—especially for take-home assignments,
about creativity, craft, teamwork, process, and other
where students will be tempted to lavish days on pol-
fundamental skills.
ishing design executions. They can do that when the
class is over.
What Makes a Great Creative Challenge?
For a challenge to succeed, it needs to contain the True Goals for Growth
following attributes:
There’s what you’re asking your classes to create in
a focus area, and then there’s what you want them
An Area of Focus
to learn.
When considering which challenges to use in a
For example: Challenge #3, “Time Machine,” requires
class—or creating your own challenges—make sure
students to take an old advertisement and execute
there is a clear, stated area of focus as part of the
it as if it had been published in a modern magazine.
challenge statement. This ranges across the various
While this is the goal for class output, what the chal-
domains of design, from branding to packaging to
lenge is actually teaching students is how to assess
advertising to user interface design. This will help the
the strategy behind an advertisement, analyze the
class gauge what kinds of design outputs are neces-
societal and artistic trends that helped to shape its
sary while solving the challenge. A list of focus areas is
execution, and translate all of those details into a
included in the Creative Workshop book.
modern design execution.
Tangible Creative Output This is no small feat—especially in 90 minutes.
Each challenge requires tangible output, from a
SITS Outside Everyone’s Comfort Zone
design sketch to a high-fidelity design execution.
(Including Yours)
Sharing an idea verbally when time is up does not
count for credit. Truly inspiring creative challenges aren’t bread-and-
butter design problems. When constructing a chal-
An (Almost) Impossible Time Limit lenge, think about how you can add variables or
unusual constraints to an everyday project to push
In class, the time limits for challenges from Creative
your class (and the teacher) into uncharted and
Workshop can be cut in half, or even shorter. If stu-
risky territory.
dents aren’t rushing to the last second to complete
the stated deliverables required at the end of a If you don’t feel comfortable leading an exercise in
challenge, you’ve given them too much time. Your an area of design you haven’t explored before, invite
Using Creative Workshop in a Classroom Setting 13

14.
in other instructors or working professionals to help real-world situations down into their constituent com-
facilitate those challenges. ponents, then analyzing them for ways in which they
can be reconstructed and improved.
Contains Content Your Students
Observation: Requiring students to step outside the
Care About
classroom and their studio into the real world, using
Each time we taught a Creative Workshop class, their senses to observe and reflect on how other
we provided the students with a brief survey at the people behave—then using this insight as the fuel for
beginning where we asked them what types of proj- design solutions.
ects and what kinds of clients they’d like to work with
Innovation: Working with design problems specifically
in the future. This information was incorporated into
in the domain of product design, service delivery,
many of the class challenges and increased
and social innovation—forcing designers to grapple
student engagement.
with how to reinvent businesses and reshape human
In addition, we asked for each student to provide at behavior.
the start of every class period a challenge that they’d
Interpretation: Open-ended problems whose solu-
created. This can be for credit, or for students to
tions require designers not only to determine what
have input into the class content. Depending on how
needs to be designed, but also to answer an even
you’ve structured the class, you can select the
more important question: Why does something need
student-suggested challenges that fit the arc of
to be made?
upcoming classes and incorporate them.
An important additional category to note is
Based on student suggestion, we’ve included at least
“Unsolvable Problems.” Students often find ways to
20% student-inspired challenges over the life of each
approach lose-lose situations with creativity and fresh
class we’ve taught.
perspectives that provide new ways of influencing
major societal issues. We often throw one unsolv-
VARYING LEVELS OF DIFFICULTY
able problem into the mix as a final assignment for
The challenges in Creative Workshop are ordered from the class, for all of us to understand exactly how far
craft-oriented problems that hone making skills to a designer’s reach can truly extend in dealing with
design problems that are open-ended, highly compli- wicked problems.
cated, and fraught with ambiguity. When brainstorm-
Tasking students with an insoluble problem may
ing challenges for the class and the book, Mary hit
seem a bit sadistic, but it’s one of the best ways for
upon the following categories for the different types of
designers to understand what it feels like to grapple
problems designers solve in their daily work, indepen-
with—and identify in the future—whether a problem
dent of disciipline:
is wicked (i.e. influenceable, but not solveable). For
Foundation: The fundamentals of being a designer more on this topic, see our rationale for Challenge #79
from a craft-based perspective. This includes typog- on page 69 of this e-book.
raphy, layout, grid systems, design history, research,
illustration, and sketching. Using Exercises in Your Existing Classes
Execution: Moving from fundamentals to real-world When David taught Creative Workshop classes, each
design deliverables, while being forced to explore a class period was four hours and consisted of solving
range of design solutions in a faster timeframe than five challenges in a row. This was a great way to intro-
they may have attempted in the past. duce a range of brainstorming methods, focus on a
series of challenges that teach a specific skill, or break
Materiality: The tangible act of making things as
a large-scale project into digestible chunks.
part of the design process—often without comput-
ers—yielding design executions that rely on the hand- It’s also possible to string out challenges over a series
made touch for their power. of weeks in a recurring fashion. At frog design’s Seattle
studio, David set up a biweekly lunchtime series to
Instruction: Cultivating the crucial skill of breaking
explore different methods of physical prototyping,
14 Using Creative Workshop in a Classroom Setting

15.
using challenges from the book and timeboxing to We required the students to show an artifact for each
teach different ways of building and evaluating com- client review, usually in sketch form. Sharing a solution
plicated systems in a low-fidelity format. verbally is not acceptable to the client. (When was the
last time you walked into a client review and told them
Solution Structures about your design idea without some tangible render-
ing of it?)
What is a solution structure? It’s a method of engineer-
ing social situations around specified challenges that This is a solution structure we have used in every
makes them much harder to solve—forcing student Creative Workshop class period, continually varying
designers to learn how to collaborate more effectively. the challenges and the unique deliverables required
during each sprint; it forces students to work in parallel
In teaching classes involving Creative Workshop, we
and quickly divide large design problems into smaller
invented the following solution structures. See which
sub-tasks, which is a crucial skill for any work setting.
ones you can come up with as well!
STRUCTURE 2: the Round-robin
STRUCTURE 1: 30 Days in 30 Minutes
It’s useful to teach at least one class period in a quar-
Teams of three or four students are provided with
ter or semester where the output from one challenge
a challenge, which they must solve in 30 minutes.
is directly inputted into the next challenge they’ll need
Those 30 minutes are divided up into the following
to solve, while rotating the students into an entirely
timeboxes:
lateral design domain.
8 minutes: Each team reaches a goal that is set
As an example: in collaboration with the designer
by the teacher.
Scott Scheff, we created a five-challenge sequence
2 minutes: The teacher serves as the client, provid- where one of my classes had to create a “record store
ing quick feedback to the teams and providing of the future.”
the next milestone.
In the first challenge, the students came up with the
8 minutes: Each team scrambles to incorporate name of the store and its logo.
the feedback and reach the next milestone.
In the second challenge, they planned out the store
2 minutes: The teacher/client gives another round space in Manhattan based on a defined set of con-
of feedback and sets the final milestone. straints provided by their real estate broker.
8 minutes: Each team incorporates the final feed- The third challenge required them to brainstorm user
back and completes the final solution(s) for the flows for a mobile application necessary to buy and
challenge. download music while in the space.
Last 2 minutes: Each team has 30 seconds to In the fourth challenge, they created a 30-second
present their solutions. TV ad for their store that had to include handmade
puppets.
As an example that describes how this works in action:
We provided a class with the “Storybook Ending” chal- For the fifth and final challenge, they had to craft
lenge in Creative Workshop, in which they had 30 min- a pitch for investment capital based on everything
utes to come up with the plot and character studies they’d created in the first four challenges.
for a children’s book.
STRUCTURE 3: Variable Client Feedback
Over the first 8 minutes of solving the challenge, they
had to ideate around the theme of their book. In the For certain challenges, we’ve stopped the students
second 8 minutes, they had to move from the theme midway through solving a challenge and provided
to a full-blown plot and characters. In the last 8 min- them “client feedback” as an additional constraint.
utes, they had to create a character study and a
Another fun way to deliver “client feedback” is to
moral for their book.
isolate a student from the overall class, take them
Using Creative Workshop in a Classroom Setting 15