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.