Signal UX—Organizing our first workshop for Sketch users
Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting my first workshop at Signal UX—Sketch Hacks & How-To’s. The event’s purpose was to teach Sketch users— new and advanced — “cool things” you can do with the program. Sketch has become a prerequisite for most design jobs, so we wanted to share new tools that attendees could add to their toolkit, while also giving them a chance to practice, hands on.
We covered both the good and the bad of Sketch, and taught attendees how they can work around the bad by using some of their many awesome plugins.
Here’s how the entire process rolled out—from planning to post-event takeaways.
Before the event
One of the biggest challenges in hosting events is getting people to show up. With Signal UX being such a new company, our social media presence up until a month ago was next to none. So, the first steps were as simple as creating pages for the business on social media platforms. Next, we created a Facebook event page, and asked people to RSVP through our Meetup page. We mainly reached a student audience. Our Meetup page was created to connect a community of people interested in digital product design. Our Facebook page was important because is was our main platform for raising awareness. Facebook is great at making sure that your event reaches a huge network.
We also designed and ordered ‘How might we’ stickers as freebies for anyone who attended!
During the event
Here are some of our favourite tricks and plugins that were shared:
- Creating and overriding symbols
If you’re using Sketch and you don’t use symbols yet, you’re not really using Sketch. Symbol libraries will change the way you design. - Craft by InVision
If you haven’t already, you NEED to look into this plugin—it will save you hours of work. You can export artboards to InVision in one click, easily insert sample text from a large library of options, insert images from Unsplash based on a chosen your theme, and so much more. - Auto-Layout by Anima
Auto-Layout lets you easily stack objects and move them around within groups without affecting your layout. You can then move an item in a list, and all of the other items will just make room and shift accordingly. - Material Design icons
Google’s icons are awesome because they actually work like fonts. You just type the icon’s name, and your text becomes an icon. That makes it super easy to override icons when you’re using symbols. - Form UI template created by Signal UX
We created this form to help make your life easier—you’re welcome. - Copy/paste layout and grid settings
This plugin lets you copy/paste your chosen layout onto all of your artboards, easily. - Sketch Palettes
This plugin allows you to save palettes and load/clear the palettes within sketch. It’s great if you use several palettes, or want to save colours you use often.
After teaching attendees some valuable Sketch tools, we put their skills to test. We challenged each participant to prototype at least one music player screen in 45 minutes, following these rules:
- Must have a “now playing” view.
- Needs to include some from of navigation.
- Make something new and interesting. (Not just a copy of Spotify or Apple Music…)
- You must use at least one thing you learned during the first half of the workshop.
This activity was valuable because it forced people to start creating. It’s easy to waste time staring at a blank Sketch canvas because you just don’t know where to start—the best way to overcome this is to get started quickly. It was impressive to see what people could create in such a short period of time.
Participants were then asked to present their prototype for a chance to win a free Sketch license. (Congrats to Tina, the winner!) Here are some of the awesome designs that were shared:
Support
After publicizing the event, we reached out to Sketch Community to ask them if they would be willing to sponsor us with prizes. They were extremely supportive and gave us 2 free Sketch licenses to give away to participants. (They also sent us some swag, but it didn’t get to us on time for the event. :( ) That value proposition helped us get more people interested, and do a little bit of hype marketing. (S/O to Tina and Jess who won!)
The day of the event, we were also contacted by Anima. They saw that we would be using their Auto-Layout plugin throughout the workshop and offered to give a free 1-year Launchpad license to one of our attendees, as well as free licences for the co-organizers of our Meetup. (S/O to Abbie who won!)
Lastly, our friends at Foober (a food delivery service startup for students) offered to pay for pizza at the workshop, in exchange for asking attendees to fill out a quick survey. (Thanks again, Brad!)
What we learned
- There’s nothing wrong with asking for help!
If we hadn’t asked Sketch to help us out, they wouldn’t have. The awesome prizes they provided us with are what helped us attract some of our attendees. - It’s difficult to teach people with different levels of experience at the same time.
One of the challenges the day of the workshop came when we realized that many of the experienced people who had signed up didn’t show up… It was difficult to teach both advanced and new users at the same time. However, the more advance participants contributed in getting the newbies started. - People learn by doing.
The most valuable part of the workshop was the challenge—where people actually put their skills to test. Participants were surprised by how much they were able to accomplish in a small period of time. - People get bored.
Something that’s interesting to you may not be interesting to someone else. It’s difficult to please everyone, but present the stuff that will reach as many people as possible when you’re presenting. - 40 people signing up ≠ 40 people showing up.
We ordered way too much pizza…
Why we ran a free workshop
It might seem weird to run a free workshop with so many give-aways—but it’s really not. Signal UX values generosity and our company culture largely focuses on educating others. We want other people to learn the tools that we use, and use them to improve the way they design.
Events are also a great way to raise awareness for your business, and they’re one of Signal UX’s main free value propositions.
Next steps
Our next event will be a collaborative workshop on Gamestorming. The exact date is still TBD, but it will be near the end of August. Stay tuned for updates on our Facebook, Twitter and Meetup pages.
Hope to see you there!
Update
Come out to our next event on Gamestorming! Click the image above for more details and to RSVP!
