I co-designed sketchmi (with Kylie Goh), a drawing toolkit, and brought it to life with a successful Kickstarter campaign.
In just 8 months, we took the project from needfinding to prototyping to manufacturing to marketing to fulfillment.
Here's a glimpse at our journey -
We observed and interviewed young folks (8-20 years old) to understand their feelings around drawing and creative skills.
A blank page is intimidating, especially when it comes to creative expression. How do you know where to start?
How might we inspire a sense of creative confidence?
How might we leverage current tech to make drawing more approachable and encourage exploration?
Early ideas and prototypes centered around creating an all-in-one cardboard art folio. However, initial user testing led us to focus on just one element of the folio that brought the most joy and wonder: the smartphone/tablet-powered "light table".
We continued to iterate on the concept of using a smartphone screen as a source of light AND drawing inspiration.
This simple idea sparked joy in many of our users and led us to develop the sketchmi toolkit:
1. a smartphone/tablet case to turn your device screen into a bright tracing surface
2. a library of digital drawing activities, to give users inspiration to explore their creativity
Later-stage testing with kids and youths led us to develop a book-like form for our device case, and also helped us identify the most exciting and inspiring digital drawing exercises.
We ran a successful Kickstarter, raising over $20K for one production run of sketchmi kits! I designed and produced all digital media (including photo / video) and marketing materials for our campaign.
As the Kickstarter came to a close, Kylie and I prepared our physical design for manufacturing with a domestic book factory to meet their machinery requirements. I also designed book bands and instructional brochures, working with local vendors to get them color matched, sized, and printed.
As the lead for visual design, I produced sketchmi's final branding and website. In addition to housing FAQs and information about our product, the website also contains a portal for users to access the downloadable drawing exercises ("sketchlets").
Our final brand identity and visuals -
