Five Sketches™

I watched an illustrated video of an illustrated speech by Ken Robinson on changing education paradigms. I believe the paradigm shifts he calls are also needed in the development process of software and information products.
In his speech, Robinson cites a study on divergent thinking—thinking in an unusual and unstereotyped way—which isn’t the same thing as […]

Designing is usually a rewarding activity, but the path from start to finish can be filled with frustration and even panic. I’ve seen design processes work—and come to the realisation that “My own designs benefited from rapid iteration!”
These humbling experiences helped me learn to trust the process, even in the face of frustration or panic. It’s these experiences that give […]

For a Five Sketches™ design session, I ask design participants to bring at least five substantially different ideas to the table, in the form of sketches. A common initial reaction is: “…But I can’t sketch!”
Many design participants believe they cannot draw. To be honest, I believe that about myself. People who feel they cannot draw tend to extend that belief […]

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 […]

Here are three techniques for eliciting more feedback on your designs:

show users some alternatives, so more than one design.
show users a low-fidelity rather than high-fidelity rendering.
ask users to sketch their feedback.

To iterate and improve the design, you need honest feedback.  Let’s look at how and why each of these techniques might work.
Showing alternative designs signals that the design process […]

I first heard Bill Buxton talking about sketching in Texas, at the UPA 2007 annual conference. I was running around with a video camera asking people what they thought of Bill Buxton’s presentation. Everyone loved it, including his ideas on sketching and design. But almost everyone I spoke to also said Buxton’s requirement for five sketches […]

When solving a software-design problem or a web-design problem, you get the best results from following a design process. I’m not referring to something I made up. I’m referring to something that people who are trained in “Design” will recognise as a design process. And such processes inevitably include divergence and convergence.
Divergence is the stage when […]

Having a good design idea is not an amazing event. People have good design ideas all the time. What is amazing is having lots of good design ideas, so that they can be combined and iterated into the best possible design.
Here’s why ideas are disposable:

Sketching lets you capture lots of ideas, quickly and inexpensively.
The more ideas […]

There’s been a loss of usability for people who type text.
Like me, you may have experienced these unwelcome experiences:

After typing a long message in Facebook, when I click send, I get a page error and my entire message is lost.
After typing a post in WordPress, if the server has gone down or I press an unintended keyboard shortcut, […]

Leah Buley talked about generative design at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, today. Buley feels design methods are lacking in the set of professional tools we use for software development: “We don’t have so many good, reliable, repeatable design techniques.” I agree with her.
Buley tells how, in her first design session at Adaptive Path, she was handed a pen and […]