Best practices in teaching and
workshop facilitation also proved to
be a popular topic, bringing the group
together regardless of their area of
interest within HCI as a whole.
The success of the SIG, and how
much was realized in the short 90
minutes, propels us to host similar
events at the forthcoming CHI in
Glasgow and other sponsored ACM
conferences. By allowing practitioners
and researchers to come together in this
manner, collaborations and contacts are
made and the prospect of sketching in
HCI could be strengthened.
SKETCHING THE FUTURE
Sketching can be seen as a particularly
human activity. In our earliest years
as Homo sapiens, we made marks on
cave walls to depict the world around
us. That world is forever changing,
but this simple method of recording
our surroundings has lasting appeal.
The tools available to us may also be
different, such as the advent of the
tablet computer and digital stylus,
but we currently remain the sole
perpetrators of this form of output.
Could this be about to change?
Paul the Robot has been built to
draw portraits of people as a naive
artist and observer [ 8]. Advances in
neural networks are training computers
to recognize the styles of famous
painters and reuse them in creating
original artworks in the same vein. The
next steps for sketching in HCI could
see machines as the foci of creative and
expressive practice. We might compare
the sketches of a machine to those of
a child learning to draw and attribute
some form of humanity to the resulting
images. Interactive systems can also
teach us how to better wield a pen,
gently shifting our lines to conform
to aesthetic ideals suggested by the
computational analysis of thousands
of similar images or training our
muscles to recognize their relationship
to the mark on the page using playful
interfaces. Perhaps the sketch of the
future embraces other formats of the
same descriptor—pieces of code,
movement, algorithms.
The evolution of sketching research
does not negate its roots but rather
offers further avenues of inquiry,
widening its reach. Sketching is one
technique that transcends disciplines,
S
subdisciplines, and social groups, and
this potential to bring together groups
within HCI should not be overlooked.
By creating working groups aimed
at promoting sketching as discourse,
analysis, and research practice, we can
collaborate on developing sketching
in practice and reap the rewards of an
engaged, expressive, and interactive
researcher base.
CONCLUSION
Not only do we wish to elevate
sketching practice and methodologies
as a focus for research, but we also call
on CHI to embrace and promote all
visual forms of documentation, such
as the pictorial, a recent development
in archival formats used by the
DIS and Creativity and Cognition
conferences. To actively engage with
imagery in relation to technology—and
not limit it to the simple outputs of
machinery and computers—furthers
the interdisciplinary embrace of CHI,
and therefore that of ACM. Blending
diverse practices and subject matter
breaks us out of our comfort zones and
can lead to discovery and purposeful
reflection. And it could all start with
a sketch. Sketching as we know it may
evolve during the age of the computer,
but it is here to stay.
Join the Sketching in HCI Slack
Group: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/
e/1FAIpQLSeH8UQCQX4rN0cEcJGPfi
63w6tqf NmKNR7t0wI_eRDf S_DiRQ /
viewform
To see the SketCHI narrative from
CHI2018, search #SketCHI and
#CHI2018 together on Twitter.com
( https://bit.ly/2Q5XNS2).
Endnotes
1. Cohn, N. Explaining ‘I can’t draw’:
Parallels bet ween the structure and
development of language and drawing.
Human Development 55, 4 (2012), 167–192.
2. Lewis, M., Sturdee, M., and Marquardt,
N. Applied Sketching in HCI: Hands-on
Course of Sketching Techniques. Extended
Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems.
ACM, New York, 2018, Paper C08.
3. Greenberg, S., Carpendale, S., Marquardt,
N., and Buxton, B. Sketching User
Experiences: The Workbook (1st ed.).
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San
Francisco, 2011.
4. Lewis, M., Perry, M., and Louvieris,
P. Designing smart money on a digital
ledger: Central bank issued digital
N
currencies. HCI for Blockchain: A CHI
2018 Workshop on Studying, Critiquing,
Designing and Envisioning Distributed
Ledger Technologies. Extended Abstracts of
the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors
in Computing Systems. ACM, New York,
2018, Paper W28.
5. Sturdee, M., Hardy, J., Dunn, N., and
Alexander, J. A public ideation of shape-changing applications. Proc. of the 2015
International Conference on Interactive
Tabletops & Surfaces. ACM, New York,
2015, 219–228.
6. Sturdee, M., Alexander, J., Coulton, P.,
and Carpendale, S. Sketch & The Lizard
King: Supporting image inclusion in HCI
publishing. Extended Abstracts of the 2018
CHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems. ACM, New York, 2018,
Paper alt15.
7. Lewis, M., Sturdee, M., Marquardt,
N., and Hoang, T. SketCHI: Hands-On
Special Interest Group on Sketching
in HCI. Extended Abstracts of the 2018
CHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems. ACM, New York,
2018, Paper SIG09.
8. Tresset, P. and Fol Leymarie, F. Portrait
drawing by Paul the robot. Computers &
Graphics 37, 5 (2013), 348–363.
Miriam Sturdee (@AsMirry) is a
postdoctoral fellow at the University
of Calgary researching sketching in
visualization. She obtained her Ph.D.
and subsequent postdoc with Lancaster
University, looking at sketching for the
design and development of shape-changing
interfaces. Her interests in sketching in HCI
combine her M.F. A. in Illustration with her
initial studies in psychology.
→ miriam.sturdee@ucalgary.ca
Makayla Lewis (@maccymacx) is a
research fellow at Brunel University
London looking at smart money and user
experience. An accomplished visual thinker
and sketcher, she organizes the monthly
SketchnoteHangout and SketchnoteLDN,
among other sketching events and courses,
including ones at NordiCHI 2016 and DIS
2017. She has also provided visuals and
sketchnotes for conferences such as CHI
and ISS.
www.makaylalewis.co.uk
Nicolai Marquardt (@nicmarquardt) is an
associate professor in physical computing
at University College London. At the UCL
Interaction Centre, he works on projects in
the areas of ubiquitous computing, interactive
surfaces, sensor-based systems, prototyping
toolkits, and physical user interfaces.
Together with Saul Greenberg, Sheelagh
Carpendale, and Bill Buxton, he is co-author
of the Sketching User Experiences Workbook
(Morgan Kaufmann 2011).
www.nicolaimarquardt.com
DOI: 10.1145/3274562 COPYRIGHT HELD B Y AUTHORS. PUBLICATION RIGHTS LICENSED TO ACM. $15.00