However, with the Adobe Cloud being an expensive product and students not knowing which programs they would want to use and make good value of. From this I decided to run a free Skill-share session with a group of design students from different disciplines within design, to expose students that there is a range of design routes one can take and allow them to discover what they could be interested in practicing and learning in the future. I wanted to make an emphasis on the event being free, because education often always comes at a price, and it is important for people to be able to explore new things without having to sacrifice payment.

The aim of this event was to inspire Students that don’t use design in their projects and expose them to new ways and ideas that may assist them to help them in the future if no designers are able to produce their ideas. The team that I managed to bring together believed that design is an essential practice to any form of project, and the sessions we ran presented a diverse opportunity for people to really understand the different paths design may take. Everyone that ran a session was passionate about design, coming from a background in Product Design, Visual Communications, Architecture and Media Arts and Production. The students that came to our session found value in the conversations we held about design and learnt a lot about the range of programs and opportunities they are now exposed to.

Promotional Content Online

It was an amazing opportunity to make this event happen and being able to organise our own space to hold this event in the Design, Architecture and Building Computer labs at UTS. Not only did we have students come from Creative Intelligence and Innovation, but some also came from outside of the faculty within UTS and even students from other universities such as University of Sydney and UNSW came to learn about the importance of design and gain new skills. The event was marketed all over Instagram, Linked In, Facebook and posters printed around UTS to gain traction and really expose the importance of understanding and being able to practice design. It was a great way to show everyone who participated in the event a slim insight into what we learn in Design and how it can be useful for things such as prototyping, storytelling, and presentations. The event ran over a period of two hours, with three sessions to choose from in each hour depending on what the participant was interested in. With only a week’s notice of the event, we managed to gather an intimate group for each session, which really allowed us to make sure everyone understood the programs we were teaching them and providing them with necessary feedback.

We put up polls online so that people who wanted to attend were able to express their interests as to what they wanted to learn. We were able to customise the sessions due to the demand of each topic which ended up really successful. Some sessions had more than others attend which meant that the smaller groups were able to receive an almost private one on one session, which was useful to them because then they were able to ask more questions and have responses suitable to their queries.

As an emerging trans-disciplinary professional, I believe that is important to really push and be pushed out of the comfort zone of what we know and constantly learn new things and ideas that challenge what we know and grow our skill sets. While I would love for everyone to know, understand and love design, I would equally love to learn things that challenge my core discipline of design and look at other faculties and how their education can tessellate with my own. I have learned over time that having a design knowledge is only useful when you’re aware of the world around you because that’s what you’re designing for. If everyone had that attitude of wanting to learn more from others it would really change the dynamic of group work so that instead of one person working on an allocated task, everyone is able to contribute everywhere, which is what the purpose of the Skill-share event was aimed to inspire. A lot of the students that attended the event felt like they learned something new and really wanted to continue learning so that they can enjoy the full experience of design.