![]() With his 2007 book, Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton took the design community by storm by showing how sketching can and is being used in digital design, and more importantly for us, how it is essential for technology design, in which everything we do is-in some sense-a brand new experience. Whenever you need more ideas, pull out a napkin and start sketching. Perhaps most helpful of all, it can be done at any step in the software creation workflow. It helps you to find alternatives and stay flexible instead of locking into one path early in your design process. Once you ease into the practice, you will find that sketching lets you develop your ideas and find any potential problems early. In fact, if you are already a good artist, you might even want to reign yourself in a bit. The drawings are just byproducts of your creative process. Chicken scratches and stick figures are fine. One of the keys to good sketching is to keep your ideas loose. The benefits, however, are extraordinary. In his book Design for Software: A Playbook for Developers, Erik Klimczak, creative director at Truth Labs in Chicago, writes “Sketching is the quickest and most disposable form of generating ideas.” Like code-first and similar coding practices, it is a way to jumpstart yourself with little effort or commitment. ![]() It allows you to think about your app without investing much time or resources into it. The practice of sketching epitomizes the principle of fail early and fail fast. Are there sticky bits on your mouse that make it occasionally skip? This attention to the experience of sketching is to remind yourself that it is the activity of sketching as much as the result which is important.Īre you done? Throw your sketch away and start another. Though it may seem irrelevant at first, take a moment to note the resistance of the pencil as it scratches across the paper, or the smoothness of the pen on paper, or the way the mouse rolls across your pad if you are using a drawing program. Try to sketch quickly and enjoy the simplicity of the activity. Remember: the first attribute and rule of sketches is that all sketches are disposable. To make this exercise easier, plan to throw whatever you draw into the waste bin once you are done. Draw whatever comes to mind when you think of this project. Consider the layout, or possibly the workflow. ![]() Think of a project you are currently working on. To start, get your writing surface-napkin or otherwise-and drawing instrument ready. If you drop by an art store, you can pick out a set of thin anime pens or colored pencils. For a small sum of money, you can purchase a Moleskine notebook in which to save your sketches. There is a certain amount of pleasure to be gained from using better tools, however. If nothing else is available, then you can use napkins, too-and plenty of designers will swear that nothing else will do. Pablo Picasso used to sketch on paper napkins and pay for his drinks that way. Sketching has four core attributes that make it both a time saver as well as a conserver of emotional energy. ![]() You can’t know if they actually work unless you try them for yourself. Simply reading about these practices won’t ever tell you if they are effective or not. In this way, it shares some things in common with developer practices like agile and test-driven development (TDD). Sketching is a design practice rather than a design theory, and to understand it, you have to actively engage in it. This is the first post in the series, however, in which you will be asked to actually do something with your own hands. In previous posts of this design series for developers, we have covered hard skills like typography and visual communication, as well as soft skills like finding inspiration. At the same time, it is an easy skill to learn-though not to master-and you have probably been doing it all of your life without realizing it. If design can be said to have one big secret, something that makes designers what they are and distinguishes them from coders, it is sketching. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |