{"id":1302,"date":"2009-03-13T15:49:48","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T13:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2009-03-13T15:49:48","modified_gmt":"2009-03-13T13:49:48","slug":"on-sketching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2009\/03\/13\/on-sketching\/","title":{"rendered":"On sketching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catching up with this slightly neglected blog (it\u2019s been 6 weeks since the last proper post). I\u2019d like to start by telling you about a small thing I helped out with last week. Peter Boersma<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup> asked me to help out with one of his UX Cocktail Hours<\/a>. He was inspired by a recent IxDA<\/abbr> Studio event<\/a> where, in stead of just chatting and drinking, designers actually made<\/em> stuff. (Gasp!) Peter wanted to do a workshop where attendees collaborated on sketching a solution to a given design problem.<\/p>\n

Part of my contribution to the evening was a short presentation on the theory and practice of sketching. On the theory side, I referenced Bill Buxton<\/a>\u2019s list of qualities that define what a sketch is2<\/a><\/sup>, and emphasized that this means a sketch can be done in any material, not necessarily pencil and paper. Furthermore I discussed why sketching works, using part of an article on embodied interaction3<\/a><\/sup>. The main point there, as far as I am concerned is that when sketching, as designers we have the benefit of ‘backtalk’ from our materials, which can provide us with new insights. I wrapped up the presentation with a case study of a project I did a while back with the Amsterdam-based agency Info.nl<\/a>4<\/a><\/sup> for a social web start-up aimed at independent professionals. In the project I went quite far in using sketches to not only develop the design, but also collaboratively construct it with the client, technologists and others.<\/p>\n

The whole thing was recorded; you can find a video<\/a> of the talk at Vimeo (thanks to Iskander<\/a> and Alper<\/a>). I also uploaded the slides<\/a> to SlideShare (sans notes).<\/p>\n

The second, and most interesting part of the evening was the workshop itself. This was set up as follows: Peter and I had prepared a fictional case, concerning peer-to-peer energy. We used the Dutch company Qurrent<\/a> as an example, and asked the participants to conceptualise a way to encourage use of Qurrent\u2019s product range. The aim was to have people be more energy efficient, and share surplus energy they had generated with the Qurrent community. The participants split up in teams of around ten people each, and went to work. We gave them around one hour to design a solution, using only pen and paper. Afterwards, they presented the outcome of their work to each other. For each team, we asked one participant to critique the work by mentioning one thing he or she liked, and one thing that could be improved. The team was then given a chance to reply. We also asked each team to briefly reflect on their working process. At the end of the evening everyone was given a chance to vote for their favourite design. The winner received a prize.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Wrapping up, I think what I liked most about the workshop was seeing the many different ways the teams approached the problem (many of the participants did not know each other beforehand). Group dynamics varied hugely. I think it was valuable to have each team share their experiences on this front with each other. One thing that I think we could improve was the case itself; next time I would like to provide participants with a more focused, more richly detailed briefing for them to sink their teeth in. That might result in an assignment that is more about structure and behaviour (or even interface) and less about concepts and values. It would be good to see how sketching functions in such a context.<\/p>

  1. the Netherlands\u2019 tallest IA<\/abbr> and one of several famous Peters who work in UX<\/abbr> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. taken from his wonderful book Sketching User Experiences<\/a> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. titled How Bodies Matter<\/a> (PDF) by Klemer and Takayama [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. who were also the hosts of this event [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. I think it\u2019s interesting to note that the winner had a remarkable concept, but in my opinion was not the best example of the power of sketching. Apparently the audience valued product over process. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Catching up with this slightly neglected blog (it\u2019s been 6 weeks since the last proper post). I\u2019d like to start by telling you about a small thing I helped out with last week. Peter Boersma1 asked me to help out with one of his UX Cocktail Hours. He was inspired by a recent IxDA Studio … Continue reading On sketching<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[625],"tags":[10,53,11,244,125,462,377,54,378,655],"class_list":["post-1302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-ixd","tag-ux","tag-interaction-design","tag-lectures","tag-presentations","tag-sketching","tag-slides","tag-user-experience","tag-videos","tag-workshops"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1302"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1308,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions\/1308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}