5 million ways to practice design
The best way to hone a skill is to practice frequently. However, when I was teaching myself design prior to my first full-time role, I noticed that thinking up what problem to practice solving was just as time consuming as doing the design work itself.
Instead of redesigning popular websites or companies, I set out to make something faster — and virtually endless.
It started on paper, naturally
It started very low-fidelity: slips of paper shuffled between two hats. I’d take one slip out of both hats, put them together, and would have a prompt to practice with. “Design X for Y”, in a sense.
I found that instead of stressing over what to design, I’d both have something to start with sooner and would often catch myself off-guard with the practice problem.
Years later, I’d discover that curve-ball design prompts are commonplace in design interviews, to see how a potential hire solves problems on the spot, and to avoid using spec work to evaluate their problem solving abilities.
I used this method to practice for interviews at Google, and after I got the job, I knew I had to share it with the world. Teaming up with fellow self-taught designer and friend Anthony Gibson, we built Sharpen.design — a tool that can now generate 5 million practice design prompts, for free.
Using Sharpen is crazy simple. Click the button, get a design prompt. No hats or paper slips required 😉
We really hope you enjoy our free practice tool! Sharpen has a bunch of new features planned for 2019, and we’re looking to grow the team. Want to help build the future of design education? Let us know at sharpen-design@vaultlabs.co
🙌🏽 Did you find this helpful?
Sharpen has been used everywhere from universities to hackathons as a way to practice the fundamentals of creative problem solving. We’d love to hear about your experience (or feature requests!) at sharpen-design@vaultlabs.co
🎉 Who made Sharpen?
The team is pretty lean! We’re Arman Nobari and Anthony Gibson, both self taught designers, and we created Sharpen.design in 2017 as a way to give back and help fellow designers practice their craft.
🐦 How can I get in touch?
You can find us (Arman and Anthony) on Twitter, or you can more formally reach out on our website.
