R5: Sketching

Of all the principles mentioned in the readings, I realize that two principles made few of my sketches draw critical review than other sketches. One was the minimalistic design, which raised interesting questions about my sketches. Even though the minimalism could be attributed to my developing sketching skill, most of the time this led to questions like the method used to charge mobile phones used in the design, due to the absence of details about the charging method (in case of mobile phone reuse sketches). Another closely related principle is Ambiguity. Some of my sketches did not give clear explanation of the inner working of the designs. For example, for the design of a coffee mug for diabetics, there was a question raised about the manner in which the sugar content will be measured in the cup and this led to a suggestion of using the same method used in glucose strips. This was a valid suggestion which would have helped if one was designing a real coffee mug.

I also realized that almost all of my designs are depiction of the design and did not tell a story to the sketch viewer. Especially after the storyboarding design activity in class, I appreciated the influence a story can have in explaining a concept. The book also suggested that telling a story from a sketch can be quite powerful way of putting your idea across and I will try to come up with stories to tell in my sketches. Also, the importance of designing an experience rather than a product is another principle that I would like to incorporate in my sketches.

The readings excerpt from Buxton’s book discusses about attributes of sketches and reflects our common understanding of what sketch is. In my opinion, most of the attributes of sketches are talking about one thing: we should regard sketches as a process of design, not the byproduct of design. That is to say that design should be tentative and ambiguous for us to explore alternatives and possibilities, just like the whiteboard design of software.
Among my previous sketches, there are some successful ones. The reason why they are successful is that I redesigned or modified some of the elements after I drew a rough sketch. It is this kind of rough sketch that provided me a reference to think with. In other words, it is easier to criticize existing design than create some brand new things.
Also, some of my successful sketches were consistent with other attributes mentioned in readings. One is minimal details. I only used stick figures and simple geometrical shapes to illustrate my design, which is easy for others to understand and will not distract their attentions.
However, there are some suggestions in the readings that I haven’t applied to my sketches, which are storytelling and role playing. All my previous sketches were almost static, or just a few steps to use it. I think I can add more elements to my future sketches to make it understandable and interesting.

On reading the chapters, I realized why some of my sketches received criticism and questions, and why some did not.
It was largely because of the degree of ambiguity, degree of conformity and the level of detailing.

I made some sketches with lots of details, listing even the technology that I thought could be used to build a working prototype out of it.
These sketches did not receive any contradicting comments or reviews, since there was very little room for a different interpretation.
Some of my sketches had minimal details and were very vague. And while explaining them to the group, I myself came up with new ideas
which very not the same as those that came to my mind when I drew the sketch. And these were the ones that closely followed few of the
important attributes described in the readings.

Going forward, I would make it a point to not worry about the final design and limit my ideas, but make quick and
disposable sketches. Sketches that are more crazy and provoke questions in mind on seeing them. Also, from my previous
sketching discussions, I realized that stick figures and interactions depict ideas really well and I would continue using
them.

The reading materials presents insightful thoughts about what is the correct understanding of sketching. Personally, one of my understands is the combination of design and sketching. According to the Buxton’s book, it reveals that sketching is the process of design which does not present a refined proposal, but provide a simply tentative concept. In the early phases of sketching, it shows a freedom world to build up imprecise suggestions of concept without rules.

Besides, a further lesson that I glean from the materials is sketches are not prototypes which sketches are at the early ideation stages and prototypes are the later process of the work from design funnel. Especially, the sketches emphasize suggestions, explorations, questions, proposals and more tentative ideas.

One of my successful sketches is used to be the final projects. The reason is I redesigned and went over the ideation like the design funnel shows which sharp the concept for further optimizing and does not have specific details. The early tentative concepts and thoughts cultivated insightful suggestions for me. The sketch(tentative concept) was accepted by others successfully in the group meeting.

For the future project work, I will use storytelling and the design funnel as model to optimize concepts. Also, the tentative sketching concepts will still guide me to build up easy-understanding sketches in design.

According the lessons I learned from readings, I decide to choose one of my sketches for R1 a more successful one than others in my past several sketching assignments. It was a sketch described an application for both bus drivers and passengers, which means each of them has a client either on their mobile phone or in their drive room, receiving useful messages from each other.

As mentioned by Buxton, sketches should be plentiful. I drew four pictures for this design idea to illustrate how the system works in every situation. Sketches should have minimal details. I used lot of rectangles and circles to represent buttons and even did not designed the user interface of the mobile client, so it would provide openness and freedom for others to imagine what the product will be like and help to improve the design. Sketches should be appropriate degree of refinement, and at the same time, should suggest and explore rather than confirm. On the class that discussed S 1, the classmates in my group came up with their critiques and suggestions to help me make the system a better one, which proved that my sketch satisfied with these conditions.

These chapters correct my misconceptions about sketch. I usually spent a lot of time on drawing sketches: I used rulers and a pair of compasses to make sure my lines and circles were accurate; I also used color pencils to draw animated characters. The principles of “Quick” and “Distinct Gesture” were violated. Also, sometimes, my animated characters sometimes were not very relevant to the design idea I wanted to convey. They were actually distracting details: people loved commenting on my animation more than evaluating my design ideas. This conflicted with the “minimal detail” principle. Also, when I was sketching, I always thought about possible questions which would be asked by group members. Therefore, I often annotated my sketches, trying to explain everything. This contradicted the principle of “minimal detail”, “suggest and explore rather than confirm” and “ambiguity”, I guess that’s why I seldom got questions from group members.

I will draw lessons from today’s readings and apply these useful principles to my sketches. For example, I will quicken my sketching process and follow certain sketching conventions instead of consuming much time in drawing precise lines; I will avoid superfluous details; I will leave a lot to my reviewers’ imagination, interpretations and suggestions instead of specifying and confirming everything in my sketches.

Sketching:
After reading Buxton’ article on sketching I took a look at sketches that I have drawn so far. A common factor to all the sketches was it was quick. Though I spent a lot of time on thinking about different ideas and on three best ideas for the week’ topic, my sketching took inverse amount of time. This being said I think I need to work on having ambiguity in my sketches as it is the best way to elicit feedback from peer reviewers. Also looking at my sketches I found that some of them are on the lines of story-boarding. Another theme in my sketches has been familiarity-driven detailing, by this I mean that I tend to be detail-oriented when I’m familiar with the topic (example: sketches on “sports” in S3) and more abstract when I’ve not been exposed to a topic (example: sketches on “Health” in S2). A revelation after reading this article is that, the goal of sketching is not the sketch itself but to convey an idea and discuss the idea. And being precise on the functionality of a new product prevents discussion on alternate ways of achieving the goal.
In my future sketches my aim is to get more feedback by allowing ambiguity and leaving out detail even when I have the final design in mind.

Dark and stormy night:
I found the article very interesting, particularly the quote “If interactive sketches need to be timely, cheap and quick to produce, then words are one of the most efficient weapons in our arsenal”. The author conveys that creativity comes from imagination and playing around with ideas rather depicting/presenting concrete designs. The author suggests that the essence of story-telling is that we need to conjure the right images and memories which convey the design/image. This is true as stories abstract the formal principles of design and provide an informal way of characterizing an idea. The best thing is to keep things simple and involve humor as it throws open a world of possibilities.
Few of my sketches have words/quotes in them as I felt stick-figures alone would not depict an idea. But I feel that I could have cut down the number of words used so that imagination comes into play and allows reviewers to suggest on how to add details in different ways.

I have always loved sketching. But the kind of sketching that I used to do earlier, as a hobby, was too abstract and had no explicit meaning attached to it. It had always been on the philosophical side of this world and at times was just for fun. But when I began sketching for this course, the goal defined for each sketching assignment became important and led to grounding of my ideas which were floating in the air (i.e. until they were sketched). I gradually realized that it is not necessary to perfect your ideas before giving them a form; rather I learned that they get molded in the process of making. Also, it is not required to make a perfect sketch with full details, by not getting stuck on the technological challenges I found more room for creating out-of-the-box ideas.

While I was reading the readings from the book by Bill Buxton I was constantly nodding my head in agreement with the attributes that he has mentioned as essentials for sketching user experiences. I have experienced them through this process. There is a “lot” to learn. The sketches that seem obvious to me may not be obvious for others. The trade-off between being open (and/or ambiguous) and rendering with clear vocabulary needs to be taken into account. It is okay not to go into details, but the sketch should be such that it is readable in future by others. Also the art of conversing through means of sketching is to be learnt. Dialog is vital means of conveying thoughts and should be incorporated in sketches or any design process. Such dialog will help me in better conveying my ideas to the group without much explanation.

I loved the British rail anecdote in the second paper a lot. It suggests that design and sketching, should not be a proof it should be a suggestion in the process of ideation which triggers imagination and memories. It is amazing how a simple thought can be capable of generating plethora of design opportunities.

Additionally, being plentiful by making a number of sketches for a particular assignment was very helpful. I can see a pattern in my sketching; I usually end up making 3-4 quick sketches for my “3rd sketch”, this is evident of the process that I become a part of, a process that matures as more ideas start flowing in. It’s hard to start, but it’s much harder to stop :). I love it!

The thumb rule I learned for sketching from the readings and my experience is- “Keep it crude, Keep it humble and Keep it open for exploration.”

From the reading, I have inferred that the main goal of sketching is to invite criticism, suggestions, and comments rather than to provide a solution. Hence, the sketch should have minimal details to leave a room for imagination. One of the attributes that I found missing in my initial sketches is ‘plentifulness’. The sketches were more or less isolated. However, my recent sketches were combination of multiple thumbnail sketches. I also noticed that some of my sketches have excessive text explaining the details about the sketch, which I find unnecessary now. In recent, sketches I have tried to use more visual elements and minimal text to describe it. Going forward, I would like to stress more on sketching the interaction of the design.

Reviewing my previous sketching after reading the two papers let me reflect some thought here. First, it is easier to sketch a simple idea than a complicated one. If the idea is simple, straightforward, I can grasp the main point over the sketching. For example, the idea of wireless stethoscope is relatively easy to be rendered. I just put a head of stethoscope and two ear plugs, a few explanations can clearly express my idea. And it prompts reviewers thoughts without distraction, e.g. some audio processing, AI aided diagnosis. On the contrary, if some ideas that need more detail to explain, I often feel my sketch is not capable to clarify the idea easily. For example, the “easy assemble bike”. I found that if I just render the overall idea, like showing a bike and disassemble parts, it is hard to describe how it works. If I render more details, it distracts the main idea. After reflecting on the sketching characters, I think sketching is not just simple, but still need to be refined progressively.

Another thought is that I still need to rethink about the idea of minimal detail. Although I did sketch the sketches, but I haven’t really think about minimize the detail before. When communicating with other people, not minimized the detail could become a problem to help others to grasp the main idea.
In sum, sketching is not just sketching out what you think, but really need to consider how to convey the idea through sketching.

After read the reading material, I find I used to take a wrong idea about what is sketch. I thought the sketch is like a final prototype or at list a certain model. I just composed whatever I got from mind to a sketch sheet. I never had the idea to have a conversation with the sketch and get feedback from them and refine them.
From the article, I learnt that; sketch is a suggestion and exploration rather than confirmation; it is ambiguity rather than clarification; it is minimal detail rather than maximal concept. Sketch is a way to help us to find the design. I have to learn how to read a sketch and how to learn from it. Look it as just a single step during the design process, and tread it as a tool or a method.

Sketching is a powerful tool i love. Just now, i brainstormed an iPhone app with a friend and I had him sketch it out for me. One thing missing from the class is sketching together, which is a complementary side of what we currently do. Through this, ideas will clash, pure descent will exist, and more ideas will exist. One thing i love about sketching is knowing what details to leave out and how much to leave it. Ambiguity is a powerful ally and gives the imagination plenty of room to explore without deviating too much from the objective.

Secondly, i notice that students sometimes focus the sketches on the product and less on the user and his/her environment. It’s one thing to sketch an app, but it’s crucial to know sketch the environment it is intended to be used in. What if the user is in a snowy environment wearing thick gloves, or in line at a noisy store? In fact, everything i know about sketching comes from two sources: a design clinic at Cal where our hands were held on sketching human expressions to actions and simple objects to Bill Buxton’s “Sketching the User Experience” handbook.

There is a lot of difference between a naïve designer and a professional sketcher. There is a difference in how they understand the world and how they visualize the product and as described in Buxton even the psychological factors also affects the sketch. When I start a sketch mostly I will start with the simplest part of the sketch and then I will sketch the rest but a professional visualizes it before hand that is where the difference is. As described in Buxton any sketch should satisfy these attributes 1) Quick 2) Timely 3) Inexpensive 4) Disposable 5) Plentiful 6) Clear vocabulary 7) Distinct gesture 8) Minimal detail 9) Appropriate degree of refinement 10) Suggest and 11) Ambiguity. I make sure that I try to adopt these attributes in my sketch. Sketching in the broad sense, as an activity, is not just a byproduct of design. It is central to design thinking and learning. Though I could not understand the exact differences among 1) Sketch 2) Memory drawing 3) Presentation drawing 4) Technical drawing and Description drawing I could get some idea from the visualizations in the chapter. I understood that sketches are not prototypes and they are just initial drafts of the design. I definitely consider the technique acting with the sketched props because it gives me the real time insight of the product usage.