Abstract:

In the past 15 years, faculties around the world have seen research areas and courses like interaction design and shape changing interfaces expand the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Consequently, design plays a growing role in IT education. To many, it is a welcome opportunity to combine skills and interests in industrial design, interaction design, and technical and material construction. Unfortunately, students enrolled in a design course at a computer science faculty rarely get the same training in design tools as students in design schools. As a result, students miss the opportunity to develop the visual language that they⎯if they are to practice design professionally⎯need as a tool for reflection and dialogue.

In the design community, sketching is often understood as the production of paper sketches of the type described by (Goldsmidt, 1991; Goldsmidt, 2003), but in fact, sketches can take many forms. Buxton (2007) uses the term sketch to describe any representation of an idea or concept that can be used to get new ideas, develop old ones, or think about well-known issues in a new fashion. Consequently, a sketch can be pen on paper, a design artefact or physical performance of, say, an intended interaction design. In the literal as well as in the metaphorical sense, designers sketch to help themselves and others see things in new ways, including physical forms which can be sketched using 3D modelling or experiments with materials, modes of interaction, and the potential use context of a design, which can be sketched using enactment techniques such as forum theatre, (Newell et al., 2006) or bodystorming, (Oulasvirta et al., 2003).

Apart from helping new thinking in terms of reflection in action and the framing of concepts, sketching also serves to help designers talk and about and share an idea, as well as remember and store its key components (Ferguson, 1992; McGown & Green, 1998; Ullman, Wood, & Craig, 1990). This is why sketching is many designers’ preferred technique to inspire thinking and help them communicate with others. And this is why sketching is such a crucial technique to any designer.

Sketchnotes is a genre defined and developed by the people producing sketchnotes. Perhaps the special ‘feel’ of a sketchnote is what defines it best; it feels informal, like it has been produced quickly by a playful and light hand, and it is persistent in the way it captures your eye and forces you to look, read and think about what it might want to communicate. This light and informal tone resonates well with the words used by Buxton to describe the quality of designers’ sketches such as ‘explorative’, ‘fast’, and ‘open for interpretation’ (Buxton, 2007). This shared quality makes sketchnotes interesting as a means to train design sketching.

The paper presents a series of sketchnote related activities deployed in a design course at a computer science faculty. The activities aimed at boosting students’ use of sketching in product development and the paper reports on insights gained through activities such as ‘teaching basic drawing technique’ and ‘using peer review as a way to open students’ eye to sketch qualities’. Finally, the paper provides an overview of activities and focus areas in order to inspire other design educators to assist novices become comfortable with sketching.

Keywords:

Design sketching, design teaching, sketchnoting, thinking tool, dialogue tool, learning.