It was the culmination of a
very confusing discussion, where everyone thought they knew what they were
talking about, but, as it turns out, nobody was on the same page. In a moment
of frustration, one junior team member—a designer—stepped up to the whiteboard
and declared, "This is what I think we're talking about."
Turns out the junior designer
got it wrong. Yet his design spurred the idea's progenitor to rush to the
board, grab the pen, and quickly correct the mistakes.
That's when the group sighed
their collective "ohhh" and the room lit up. The shift had happened.
Up until now, they were talking about WHAT they were trying to do. Now, they
could talk about HOW they would do it.
The WHAT was now on the
whiteboard—and in everybody's heads. For the first time, it was the same WHAT
everywhere.
Sketching: Leveraging the Visual
Words are powerful, but
sometimes they don't cut it. We can try to describe what we're imagining, but a
diagram often gets us to a common ground quicker.
As our team has been studying
the skills of great designers, we've seen sketching emerge as a theme. All of
the best designers we've met sketch. They are comfortable picking up a pen or
pencil and putting it to paper (or, in many cases, whiteboard).
We've been looking at how
these designers make their sketches. The artistic quality of the drawings can
vary—most are not particularly organized or neat. Their messiness reflects the
speed at which they came into being. We've learned that the effectiveness of
the communication that matters more than the neatness of the artwork. We
noticed that sketching happens for different reasons, so we started to
categorize them.
Sketching To Communicate An Idea
"Here's what I'm trying
to tell you..."
We have an idea. We need
others to have that same idea. Sketching is a common way for us to express the
idea to others.
The ideas embodied in the
sketches range from the concrete to the abstract. They may represent a screen's
physical layout or an icon's look. Alternatively, a sketch might communicate
the ideas behind how a document might flow through an organization or the
connections between a system's modules.
The details we represent in
the sketch are the details we want communicated. We intentionally leave out all
the other details, to make our communication clear.
Bill Buxton, in his seminal
book, Sketching
User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design,
tells us the fidelity of the sketch should reflect the depth of our thinking. A
rough idea deserves a rough-looking sketch, while a well-thought-through idea
warrants finely drawn, detailed imagery.
Sketching To Record What We're Seeing And Hearing
"This is what I want to
remember..."
After last year's User
Interface 14 Conference, we were blown away by Jason Robb's sketchnotes of the
sessions.
At this year's UX Australia,
Rachel Hinman did a fabulous job capturing the key points of my keynote
presentation.
Sketchnotes are not
new—people have been taking notes with sketches for centuries. (Leonardo Di
Vinci's notebooks are filled with them.)
However, these sketches are
different. They are less about communicating ideas to others as much as
reinforcing the ideas we're seeing and hearing.
Much like written notes,
there's a reinforcement that happens when we engage our hands to capture what
we're experiencing. The details we choose to capture—the imagery and
significant quotes—help us internalize and retain the information. Often in
sketchnotes, the note taker will create a visualization of something they've
heard, reinforcing the imagery with their own sketch of the idea.
Sketching To Work Through Some Thinking
"What will this look
like?..."
Another use of sketching is
to work through an idea. Here, a designer uses the incompleteness of the sketch
to identify holes and relationships.
A form of hunkering,
the designer takes the nascent idea out of their head and puts it on paper, in
an intentionally incomplete form. This can be either a solo or group activity.
As the sketch evolves, some
of it becomes outdated. The progression of the elements reflects their work,
showing the new pieces.
One technique we've seen uses
a brainstorming framework to re-imagine the target idea in different forms. The
designer redraws the idea using a series of constraints. For example, they
might draw a screen for use on a desktop platform, then draw the same idea with
the restrictions of a mobile application. By redrawing the idea, they learn
what elements define the core idea and which are specific to constraints
they've chosen to apply.
Sketching To Reflect What We're Hearing
"This is what I think
you're telling me..."
Often we find ourselves on
the receiving end of an idea, but we don't know if we've received it the same
way the sender intends. Showing the sender a sketch of what we've heard of
their idea is a fabulous way to verify.
This has the side effect of
helping the sender work through their idea, as they may be seeing it visually
for the first time. You may have heard what they said, while at the same time,
identifying gaps in the idea itself. The discussions and corrections that come
about because of the sketch might not have emerged any other way.
Sketching To Document
"Here's is what we've
ended up with..."
Sometimes we create sketches
to capture our results—a snapshot of our work to this date. We've completed all
the thinking and we're all on the same page. Now we just want a visual record
of where we are.
When making this type of
sketch, we must consider whether the future viewers participated in the
discussions that got us to this point. If they didn't, we have to make sure
we've included the key points of that discussion in the work itself. In many
cases, the thinking behind the diagram is as important as the diagram itself.
When we're sketching for
later, we change the way we sketch. We put more care into the labeling and the
details. When we're sketching only for what's happening now, we don't need
those elements, since the discussion and evolution of the drawing enhances the
imagery. However, when that discussion and drawing evolution is absent, the
resulting sketch may need additional support to do its job.
Understanding The Reasons We Sketch
The dictionary defines sketch
as "a simply or hastily executed drawing, especially a preliminary one,
giving the essential features without the details." A good sketch, even
when done quickly, can be a powerful tool for the designer.
We're fascinated with all the
ways we can utilize a simple sketch. Knowing when sketching can help us out is
a critical part of building out our design toolbox.
