Inspire with Comics (Workshop)
This workshop teaches the art of understanding the impact of product features in the daily lives of people, and then capturing those stories in simple yet insightful cartoons or comic strips.
Comics are an informal way to convey deep insight, to start storytelling around a product or issue, and to navigate large documentation sets.
Instructor-led workshop, 3-4 hours on premises, offered at APCOMTEC Summer School since 2019.
Learning objectives
At the end of the workshop, students will be able to:
- Identify good comics.
- Identify people stories behind product features.
- Craft insightful comics to explain product features.
- Explain products with coordinated sets of comics.
Why am I teaching this?
I was inspired by a presentation by Kevin Cheng at UXLx 2011 to try comics as a way to inspire users. Comics are an effective way to teach staff to recognize the situations that products solve, serving as a starting point for further exploration of documentation, training, and user interfaces.
I have used comics in three different situations:
- In the call center industry, to teach staff how product features solve common work situations. Comics were used at the beginning of training lessons to improve the participation of students in class.
- In public transportation, to illustrate how product features improve the experience of passengers while making staff more effective. Comics served as storyboard for a promotional video.
- In a large online retailer, to illustrate the business problems being addressed by the company. Cartoons gave an overview of business processes and served as a map to navigate to relevant APIs and tutorials.
What happens in class?
First, students learn to write simple but effective illustrations. Then, students learn to search for inspiring stories that illustrate product features.
During the workshop, students will engage in the following activities:
- Analyze comics to identify characteristics that make them more or less effective.
- Draw effective figures in several simple styles.
- Find people stories for features of a sample product.
- Craft cartoons or comic strips that express short people stories.
The workshop has no formal evaluation, but successful students create a few cartoons or comic strips. Students are usually surprised when they realize how effective their “I can't draw” drawings can be.
Workshop history
The workshop was developed in 2019 to deliver in TCUK and in the first Summer School in Porto, and it has been a part of the APCOMTEC Summer School after the obligatory pandemic interruption.
| Date | Place | Class | Place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-07-05 | Porto | 8 students | “Visual Highlights of Features” at APCOMTEC Summer School. |
| 2022-07-13 | Porto | 9 students | “Visual Highlights of Features” at APCOMTEC Summer School. |
| 2019-12-13 | Article | - | “Inspire with Comics” article at the ISTC Communicator magazine. |
| 2019-09-10 | Birmingham | 28 students | “Inspire with Comics” at Technical Communication UK. |
| 2019-09-05 | Lisbon | 40 people | Short variant presented at Product Tank. |
| 2019-07-10 | Porto | 12 students | “Visual Highlights of Features” at TCeurope Summer School. |
Available on demand
This training is an instructor-led workshop available on premises. The training room requires a projector and tables for students to draw on common sheets of paper.
Contact me for details: px@acm.org — LinkedIn — +351 91 784 2996