The Sandbox Toolbox is a series of events that we host once a month at our Sandbox space to provide hands-on experience about different topics related to digital product management.
The story of how this series began is quite interesting, and it starts with an awesome guest lecturer, Elmo Soomets from Mobi Lab. The Delta building was newly unveiled and we had our awesome new space. This was when the pandemic and the lockdowns hit us and no one was able to access the space. In came Elmo with a suggestion that he would like to teach the students more about Figma, a collaborative interface design tool. After a little bit of brainstorming we were extremely excited to host the event. And that’s how we hosted the first ever Sandbox Toolbox event, called Figma 101 with Elmo Soomets. This event proved so popular that we had to do two sessions to be able to include everyone who registered for it.
It didn’t take us long to understand the value that these events added to our students. So we decided to have more of these events and the Sandbox Toolbox series was born. In the current form the Sandbox Toolbox events are hosted once a month, generally on Tuesday to give students some hands-on experience with tools that are used in the field by professionals working in the industry. Sometimes we also include some creative topics as well, for instance we once had a Visual Thinking Workshop led by Maria Kiisküla from the Tartu Art School. The aim of the series is to add tools to the participants’ skills toolbox. The lectures are generally 2 hours long, which is the normal duration of a lecture at the university.
Additionally, we also decided not to limit the audience to our students. The lectures are open to everyone who is interested in learning, and is motivated to work on the material. Like we mentioned before our focus is on digital product management and design thinking so our events revolve around the topics of User Experience, User Testing, Digital Prototyping tools etc. Having hosted a prototyping event with Velvet, we can say that we have collaborated with some of the best design agencies in Estonia. The toolbox events have provided students a much needed exposure to the industry, and positioned Sandbox as a great place to build a professional network. The events also serve as supplementary learning for the students from our courses. That’s a win-win for everyone.
We are constantly on the lookout for new topics and speakers for our events. With the Sandbox Toolbox series we are on a mission to push our students and the participants to think more creatively and expand their tool set. This, we hope, will lead them to design better products and services.