Sketching success: unleashing creativity and efficiency in UX with a workshop

At the 2023 EPDD Summit, Included Health wanted teams to break down complex workflows faster. Sketching is one of the quickest ways to align, but most engineers, PMs and researchers had never sketched and didn’t feel they could.

That hesitation slowed down every cross-functional conversation.

I designed and led a two-hour, hands-on sketching workshop for non-designers.

• Built a syllabus that breaks design flows into simple shapes and patterns.
• Used real examples from participants’ daily work.
• Created a safe, energizing room where anyone could pick up a pen.

• Remove the fear first. The session started with shapes, not drawings, so no one had to be “good at art”.
• Use their real work. Every exercise came from problems participants were already solving.
• Leave with a habit. Participants left with low-fidelity wireframes and a technique they could use the next morning.

• The only non-executive-led session at the summit.
• Participants called it empowering, cathartic and the highlight of the summit.
• Several teams brought sketching back into their rituals.

Visual thinking became a shared language across disciplines, not a design-only tool.