Design Activities: Sketching
Since I was a kid I’ve always had an affinity for drawing, sketching, and art as a whole. Although I was never great at it, I loved it regardless. While I was decent at drawing I struggled with painting and other forms of art like a sculpture. That didn’t stop me from appreciating a well painted or sculpted art piece. As I grew older I drifted from Arts. I went towards STEM, and a lot of Art skills I had learned weren’t necessarily needed. Sketching has been one skill I have carried across different phases of my life both at school and work. Although UX is not a true science field, it’s not in entirety Art either. So how does this art of Sketching/Drawing tie into the field?
Sketching is an art that ties into a lot of fields across different scopes even business at times. One might ask how exactly does Sketching tie into business? Good question, many a time we tend to either overthink and underthink the art of sketching. We overthink it by assuming the art means perfect strokes or shades or depth. But the art could be as simple as a bunch of straight lines indicating a flow such as a site map. From a business perspective, it could be a business flowchart or business strategy. We also underthink by assuming it is just about aesthetics or looks and not what it’s trying to represent. A lot of tech advancements have been as a result of sketches. A common example is a helicopter. The first helicopter was inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch, about a 100 years earlier. Da Vinci also did a lot of human body sketches with Marcantonio della Torre. And it’s due to him we have so much idea knowledge about human anatomy today.
It’s important to try sketching alone at first and get as many sketches as possible. It’s a good method of generating different ideas without interference. After sketching getting reviews from people of different backgrounds gives different perspectives. Sketches don’t have to be very detailed but distinct as possible, they should be iterated as needed.
It knocks out costs by reducing effort. I attended a meetup 3 days ago, and a speaker talked about how we as designers should always think of extreme users. He stated, “when we do we make a design that’s accessible to everyone”. By sketching, we generate a wide range of ideas we can pick apart and integrate. We can sketch an idea and test with extreme users without the dev team writing a line of code.
Sketching can be developed like other forms of Art. Sketching also makes it easy to view the design as a whole and zoom into the smallest detail. That been said sketching is more than just a simple activity you do to pass the time. And one doesn’t have to be an artist because it’s the idea behind it that’s most important not the strokes. Except if you are a fine arts student 😂 then strokes are super important.
