I was cleaning my desk the other day (something I should probably do more often) and it suddenly struck me just how many random little sketches and diagrams were scattered around my tabletop. There were stacks and stacks of paper sketches and many of them quite detailed and intricate.

Some collections were neat piles collected after a collaborative brainstorming session, but the vast majority were working sketches – that is, sketches used to think through ideas visually. If you do anything in the design world, this is probably not anything new to you. Most designers I know immediately reach for a pen and paper the moment they need to express anything that would take more than three words to describe.

This got me to thinking about the relevance of sketching in the digital age and the role it plays here at Artefact. Thinking about it more carefully, 4 major questions emerged that seemed worth exploring. Today I’ll be discussing part one of four, about sketching in general. Parts 2-4 to follow soon!

1. Why do designers sketch?
2. Paper in a Digital World
3. Sketching Next Generation User Experiences
4. Crossing the Streams: Analog+Digital

1. Why do designers feel the need to incessantly sketch?

Sketching is an invaluable skill for designers. The sketchbook is to designers what the voice recorder is to journalists, or the notepad to writers. It is the tool by which the early seeds of ideas are quickly captured and developed.

Imagining ideas is an innately human thing to do. At some point in the evolutionary process, humans gained the ability to not just remember stories and situations they had experienced, but to begin to imagine new situations and ways of doing things. In a way, those early story tellers were the first “user experience designers.”

Looking at the work of early humans it seems obvious that drawing is also deeply rooted in human development. Long before the written word, we were visually depicting the world around us. It provides a method of creative expression and exploration. Similar to the evolution of creative story telling, we moved from drawing things we saw around us, and began depicting things we imagined. This is where the process of design comes into play.

This section looks at three primary uses for sketching in the early ideatioin phase of design: as a way to transfer ideas from brain to paper, to rapidly iterate through concepts, and to build a working mental model of the design.

A Crutch for Short-Term Memory

When thinking abstractly and imagining new ideas, products, or features, we need a way to capture those ideas. Our brains can only store 4-7 things at any given time, and visual mental images last very briefly. Sketching provides a fast and natural way of bringing those ideas out of our heads and into the real world.

No matter how rough, the sketches provide at least mental cues as to what the ideas were and how they were imagined. Jonathan Fish in his research Cognitive Catalysis: Sketches for a Time-lagged Brain states that sketching’s “primary and privileged function is to support the user’s brain as he or she imagines possible objects.” To help facilitate this, it’s always great to have lots of paper or a sketchbook readily on hand. Ideas can come and go quickly, and capturing them before they disappear is critical.

Rapid Iteration

As we sketch this stream of ideas, we can begin to build on them and develop them visually on paper. These are what I like to call working sketches - sketches created primarily for oneself to simply work through and capture ideas in our head before they disappear into the ether.

Like Bill Buxton says in one of his many lectures on sketching and design, Sketches are quick, lightweight and non-committal, which makes them perfect for rapid and easy iteration. The fact that sketches are quick and lightweight is important – it prevents one from growing too attached to a particular idea or implementation. When rapidly capturing rough ideas and iterating on them, it often helps to stay as fast as possible.

The rough nature of the sketches also helps communicate to others that it’s a “napkin sketch” – (much like in this fun book and website, or less so like these sketches) something that shouldn’t be taken literally or as a final design, but simply as the core for an idea that can be developed further. I remember clearly what my senior ID professor had to say about it: “never be married to your sketches.” “they’re cheap – you can create hundreds more.” “it’s the ideas you’re developing that are valuable, you should be fine with throwing the sketch on the ground and grinding it under your feet.” Not that I literally walk around grinding paper on the floor, but the idea is that working sketches are a means not an end – a way of developing ideas further.

Often times, quickly sketching through an idea can reveal new connections or refinements, or equally likely that the idea simply won’t work as imagined. Like formal RITE studies for product concepts, these mini rapid sketch iterations either on our own or collaboratively with others can help us refine ideas, test them visually, and iterate further.

Developing a Mental Model

Working sketches don’t have to be literal representations of a visual idea – they can be abstract to explore relationships and properties. Examples include mind maps, process flows, metaphors, models, or some combination thereof, but they don’t need to be formal. They help understand larger problems through simpler models and they help one think through ideas – it’s like having a mini brainstorm session between you and the paper. Kate Rudder’s blog post “The Joy of Sketch,” has a few examples, as well as this list on PSDTUTS.

Idea sketched as a model

These same techniques can be used when working through ideas with others. I can stand in front of you and describe my idea and try to communicate it with further and further words and vigorous hand gestures, or I can just grab a pen, walk up to a white board, and in a matter of seconds communicate my visual idea more succinctly and clearly.

At Artefact, it’s no accident that nearly every wall in our studio is covered with whiteboard material and cups of pens are all over the place. Even with yards and yards of blank white space, we are constantly erasing just to make room for new sketches. We also don’t just sketch in 2D on paper and whiteboards, but we’ll discuss that later in part 3.

Not just for Designers

You don’t have to be a designer or an artist to sketch your ideas. Everyone can communicate and drawing is just another tool by which to do that. We often host client workshops where we have participants – researchers, managers, engineers, business consultants, all those engaged in the project – to help generate ideas and capture those ideas on paper. Being intimately connected to the project, they can often provide great insight to the problems at hand, which we help them bring out during these collaborative sessions.

We encourage everyone to draw a picture – even if it’s just stick figures and boxes – to help describe their ideas. The sketches don’t have to be beautiful – that’s not the point (see above) – they just need to have enough detail to capture the idea. At this point in the design process, rough sketches ensures that everyone understands that these are ideas yet to be developed.

For these types of brainstorms or for any kind of working sketch, refined skills are not required, but can speed up the process for quickly capturing many ideas at a higher fidelity. For those looking to improve their sketching skills, there are some great resources like:

• Rapid Viz
• Design Sketching
• lessons in 3D on cardesignnews.net
• Arm’s-length sketching
• Artefact’s brief concept sketch template (detailed in Part 2).
• and Bill Buxton’s Sketching User Experiences (more on this later)

Whether in a big group or on your own, sketching is a valuable tool the process of design. It helps everyone be more creative, imaginative, and collaborative with their brainstorming, plus it’s just plain fun!

Stay tuned for part 2…