Sketching a Better Product

If writing is a means for organizing your thoughts, then sketching is a means for organizing your thoughts visually. Just as good writing requires drafts, good design requires sketches: low-investment, low-resolution braindumps. Learn how to use ugly sketching to iterate your way to a better product.

Building a better mousetrap is rarely accomplished in one zenlike moment of clarity—like all creative processes, it is iterative. Sketches are those iterations for things we can see and interact with. They are the key tool used to explore ideas and decide if they have merit; they are just as important in deciding what not to pursue.

A good sketch is crude and fast. It isn’t necessarily pretty, and more often than not, it consists of just boxes and lines, rarely with color. It doesn’t matter what tools you use, so long as you can do it fast and get your ideas out where everybody can see them. It doesn’t matter if you can’t draw, because everybody can draw boxes and lines.

This talk will cover sketching as a tool in the interface design process, including both the why and the how of sketches. It will include practical techniques for sucking less at making the kind of sketches that are useful for decision making, as well as tips on simple sketching methods to make it feel like an interface.