Five Sketches™

The Agile Manifesto includes twelve principles. These two are related:
Deliver working software frequently [in short sprints that last] from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
From discussions with other practitioners, I know that software teams can get dogmatic about the above […]

Over the past month, I’ve come across the same discussion several times: “When designing a website or product, do you use wireframing or prototyping?”
The first part of my answer is: “Make sure you sketch, first.”
At the design stage, sketching, wire-framing, and prototyping are not equal. Sketching is useful at the divergent phase of design because it lets […]

It’s been a year since that flash of insight hit me. Looking back, getting to what I now call the Five Sketches™ ideation-design method was an interesting journey.
The setting. I was working on a two-person usability team faced with six major software- and web products to support. We were empowered to do usability, but not design. At the time, the team was in the […]