they would better serve their teams. Conference workshops are too brief of an experience to truly acquire drawing skills, and design drawing books generally address only good visual aesthetics—showing eye candy—not the rationale for structuring drawing to organize and express ideas.

To better equip interaction designers who desire the ability to become better communicators, I’ve developed a series of worksheets (see page 36) that can ease the transition from using words to using pictures and help keep sketching on target. Incidentally, the best communication is often a combination of words and images. One of the main issues I’ve noticed from working with professional designers and design students is that knowing what to draw is really the most difficult part.

To shift verbal and written communication toward a compelling sketch or visual narrative, a coherent plan may help to focus drawing efforts and resolve the dilemma of not knowing exactly what to draw. As interaction designers we are adept at guiding interaction and shaping user experience through designed systems or artifacts and often focus on small events to identify design opportunities. The sample worksheets shown here represent a basic approach to structuring drawings to communicate design research or design intent by simplifying interactions into key points, events and scenarios. Rather than structuring an elaborate storyboard all at once, designers can first list out the critical events for design attention. Next, key components, actions, objects, people, and systems

that shape the interaction of each event can be listed to provide a greater sense of context. For example, when looking at how an elder interacts with her dishwasher, or more specifically, how she cleans dishes using a dishwasher, one key event to design for is the pre-rinsing of dishes in the sink and transfer/ loading into the appliance. This event comprises the following elements and activities: dishes, soap, sink, dishwasher door, cups, flatware, standing, reaching over, bending, and stooping, among others. Once this list is established, a summary statement can be crafted to inform the drawn component. This statement can then be used as support within the drawn image. An example for this scenario would be: “An elderly woman stands at the sink rinsing off dishes and sequentially places them into the dishwasher by bending and stooping to reach the lower rack. She holds on to the wet porcelain sink for balance because her walker does not fit in the access space when the dishwasher door is fully open.” Now that this statement is clarified, a series of thumbnail

images can be generated to illustrate the event of pre-rinsing and loading. Thumbnails are smaller, less refined drawings that can be created quickly and easily. Their expediency can enable designers to take multiple viewpoints to best illustrate the relationships of the person-product-system.

The first worksheet (or series of worksheets) is intended to capture the key events during interaction from many different perspectives using words and images. The second worksheet enables designers to pick the best viewpoint from the thumbnails to illustrate the key events at a larger size incorporating more detail. In the dishwasher example, there are four key events illustrated to demonstrate major physical interaction. Finally, the second worksheet can be adapted for concept development where key events are used to inform design opportunities and concepts. Since the format of these sheets can vary, I encourage designers who are interested in this method to develop their own framework to use sketching combined with written narratives to express their ideas.

An alternative method for

 

Adding human elements

Human elements add reality and context to drawings that focus on interaction. Reducing human figures into basic geometries can enable quicker and more symbolic representation.