In today's lecture, we are going to continue talking about Ideation and in particular, we'll speak about sketching. Which is, the form of Ideation that is the most frequently done activity in the process of design. Bill Buxton refers to sketching, as the Archetypal activity of design. He says that "Sketching is not only the archetypal activity of design. It has been thus for centuries." When we think about design, we really are thinking about sketching as one of the primary activities of that process. There are two primary reasons why we sketch in the design process, it's to generate ideas and to communicate those ideas to other members of the design team. In terms of generating ideas sketching is really used as a primary activity of Ideation in interaction design. In this particular case, we have an image of someone who is trying to work through different forms of ear buds. But what you see here, is really that the goal here is to try to generate as many different options, for how something is going to work as possible. In this case, the person is playing with the size of the earbuds, their shape, how they're connected to the wire and so on. All within the space of a small page. In the context of Ideation, sketching has a number of key attributes. So, Bill Buxton has identified a number of key attributes of sketches that you see on the screen here. But most of these deal with a small set of core ideas. The primary one of those is that, sketches need to be quick and inexpensive. So, the goal of Ideation is to generate a lot of different concepts, and this is best done through sketching. By making each particular sketch really quick. What this allows you to do? Is to generate a lot. If every sketch is only taking a few seconds to create, that also means that you don't get attached to any given sketch and that you're much more willing to dispose of them. If they don't turn out to be useful. The other core idea is that, sketches don't need to have a lot of detailed to be useful. In fact, there's a lot of value in making sketches. In such a way that they only contain the minimum of detail that you need to convey an idea. This level of detail both makes sketches more quick to do and more inexpensive. Which we just discussed. As well as it allows for a certain a level of ambiguity, that is really helpful when sketches are used for communication purposes. By displaying a sketch to partners in the design process, they're able to read those sketches in a fresher way than they might be able to do the sketches were much more fully flushed out. That allows for a much more fruitful and productive discussion about how the design process needs to move forward. What's important to note, is that sketches don't have to be beautiful to be useful. In the previous image, you saw someone who is clearly very talented and very technically sophisticated in how they sketch. But, that is not completely needed in order to make sketching useful. Especially as part of the Ideation process. What you have here, is an image of someone who is trying to come up with different concepts for a lamp. What is important to note about this image, is that each one of those sketches is relatively minimal, right? The level of both drawing sophistication and the level of detail is far lower than what we had in the image of the ear buds. Yet, what you're able to see here, are very distinct concepts of how a lamp might work and how might they be designed. So, even with very low level of drawing skills, one is able to create highly useful sketches, that he can move the design process forward. Returning to Buxton, he has a really nice distinction between the characteristics of sketches and characteristics of prototypes. Prototypes being a much more flushed out versions of the design ideas that one is developing. On the sketch side really, the point is to make sketches evocative, make them suggestive, and be able to explore ideas and explore questions in the design space. They are intended to provoke. They're tentative so one is not committed to anything that what has sketched out and they're highly noncommittal right? So, the idea here is to generate a lot and for those ideas to be disposable. On the side of the prototypes, we're dealing with much more refined design ideas. So, whiles sketches are intended to create a lot of ideas. Prototypes are really beginning to be more refined versions of the design solutions that the designer is focused on. So, the primary role then becomes to describe those solutions, and to make those solutions available for other partners in the design process, and other stakeholders to reflect on and provide feedback. So, they're much more concrete, they're much more refined, and they are done further down the design process than sketches are. As you will look at the design literature, you will probably see many different forms of sketching. In the slides on the screen currently, you will see that a range of sketching techniques, that serve distinctly different purposes as part of the design process. Some sketches are used to communicate ideas to outside stakeholders. Those sketches tend to be much more refined than the sketches that we have been discussing that are used in the process of Ideation. A Thinking Sketch, is much more in line with what we are discussing in this lecture. They're used to create a large number of ideas and they tend to be at a lower level of refinement than the Communications Sketch. Technical Sketches are used often in fields like engineering and architecture to convey exactly how something should work to other partners in the construction process. Presentation Sketches, have even more detail and are used to market an idea or sell them in more polished presentations. Finally, there are things like Emotive Sketches, that they really can be considered final design products in fields like Graphic Design. These are the kinds of sketches that really represent some of the later stages of design thinking. For our purposes really the kinds of sketches that we should be focusing on, are what here had been called Thinking Sketches. Which are really the sketches that allow us to create many ideas that can be explored in the later parts of the designs process. Given the importance of sketching, you should try to sketch as much as you possibly can. So, start a design notebook and as early in the design process as you can start sketching any ideas for a solution that might occur to you. The more you do that early on, the more you're going to end up with a large body of material that you can then further refine as you move forward with solving your design problem. Thanks for watching and see you next time.
