1. Ideation & Sketching HCDE 518 Winter 2011
Hand outs: syllabus, A1, R1, Group form
With credit to Jake Wobbrock, Dave Hendry, Andy Ko, Jennifer Turns, & Mark Zachry

2. Agenda Break – 10 mins Announcements, Hand in assignments
Mid-Quarter Evaluation
Sketching Critiques
Lecture - Ideation
Break – 10 mins
Lecture – Sketching
Activity – Filtering
P2 Description
Next Class
Break – 10 mins
Group Project Work Time - Ideation

3. Announcements
R4 returned today
A2 returned today

4. Sketching Critiques – Travel & Transportation
Break into groups of about 4 people
Take turns showing off and explaining your 3 sketches with each other
Each critic should offer advice and feedback about the idea
Strengths, Weaknesses, Originality, Feasibility
Sketcher: take notes about what feedback was offered
Critic: be critical, but constructive and courteous!
Each critic should sign the page after the sketches and date it with today’s date

5. lecture – ideation

6. Ideation How to come up with lots of ideas?
How to come up with the big ideas?
How to refine those ideas?
How to organize those ideas?

7. Within the Design Process

8. Idea Oscillation

9. Idea Oscillation

10. Creativity

11. How to inspire creativity?
What do you currently do?

12. How to inspire creativity?
Immerse yourself in the world for which you’re designing
Generate ideas constantly
Keep a book, you never know when you’re going to be inspired
Sketch your vague ideas to think through them more clearly

13. How to inspire creativity?
Explain your ideas to others regularly
Feedback from others can inspire new ideas
But make sure you don’t get stifled by it
Take an outsider’s perspective on something you know
Take an insider’s perspective on something you don’t know
Take risks!
Early in the design process, it won’t hurt

14. Think of the Children
Children are creative because they don’t know the rules, and thus break them all the time
Children don’t know the consequences, and thus are more likely to take risks

15. Other ideas Take things from one domain and try them in another
Talk with other creative people
Leave your comfort zone
Be passionate about the topic
Consider posting sketches around your workspace for inspiration and feedback
Read science fiction

16. More ideas (Mountford 1990)
New uses of the design
Adapt the design to be like something else
Modify the design for a new purpose
Magnify—add to the design
Minimize—subtract from the design
Substitute within the design
Rearrange the design
Reverse or transpose the design
Combine the design in an ensemble

17. Possible Futures
Look to current trends and extrapolate future possibilities. The trends can be human, or technology, or both. Think sci-fi!
Current trends
Distributed, social, community-driven, bottomup, sensors, networks, ambient, invisible, mobile, reconfigurable, fashion, adaptive…

20. Roleplaying

21. Roleplaying Features Script Director Actors Audience Setting
Performance or rehearsal?
Props

23. Roles to Adopt The Explorer The Artist The Judge The Warrior
gathers information and research
The Artist
generates new ideas in the early phases
The Judge
evaluates and filters the generated ideas
The Warrior
champions one idea and sets the course forward

24. Brainstorming Working in groups is essential to design
Brainstorming can be fun and fruitful
Keep the results of your user research handy during the process
E.g., personas, scenarios, lists of design requirements

25. Rules for Brainstorming
1. Be visual
2. Defer judgment
3. Encourage wild ideas
4. Build on the ideas of others
5. Go for quantity
6. One conversation at a time
7. Stay focused on the topic

26. 7 Brainstorming “Dos” (Tischler, Fast Company, 2001)
1. Sharpen the focus
2. Write playful rules
3. Number your ideas
4. Build and jump
5. Make the space remember
6. Stretch your mental muscles
7. Get physical

27. 6 Brainstorming “Don’ts” (Tischler, Fast Company, 2001)
1. Let the boss speak first
2. Give everybody a turn
3. Ask the experts only
4. Go off-site
5. No silly stuff
6. Write down everything

28. Break – 10 minutes

29. lecture – sketching

30. Sketching - Overview What is sketching? Why do sketching?
Sketching properties
What is and is not a sketch?
Sketching vs. prototyping

31. Sketching Definition
A process that enables you to think through ideas and convey design ideas to others very early in the design phase

32. Why is sketching useful?
Early ideation
Think through ideas
Force you to visualize how things come together
Communicate ideas to others to inspire new designs
Active brainstorming

33. Sketch as a dialog with the mind
(new knowledge)
Sketch
(representation)
(seeing that)
(seeing as)
Buxton, pp. 114

34. Buxton’s Sketch Properties
Quick
Timely
Inexpensive
Disposable
Plentiful
Clear vocabulary
Distinct gesture
Minimal detail
Appropriate degree of refinement
Suggest and explore rather than confirm
Ambiguity

35. Quick
A sketch is quick to make, or at least gives that impression

36. Timely
A sketch can be provided when needed

37. Inexpensive
Cost must not inhibit the ability to explore a concept, especially early in design

38. Disposable If you can’t afford to throw it away, it’s not a sketch
Investment is in the process, not the physical sketch
However, not “worthless”

39. Plentiful They don’t exist in isolation
Meaning & relevance is in the context of a collection or series

40. Clear vocabulary
The way it’s rendered (e.g., style, form, signals) makes it distinctive that it is a sketch
Could be the way that a line extends through endpoints

41. Distinct Gesture
Fluidity of sketches gives them a sense of openness and freedom
Opposite of engineering drawing, which is tight and precise
Vs.

42. Minimal Detail
Include only what is required to render the intended purpose or concept

43. Appropriate Degree of Refinement
Make the sketch be as refined as the idea
If you have a solid idea, make the sketch look more defined
If you have a hazy idea, the sketch will look much rougher and less defined

44. Suggest and explore rather than confirm
Sketch should act as a catalyst to the desired and appropriate behaviors, conversations, and interactions

45. Ambiguity Intentionally ambiguous
Value comes from being able to be interpreted in different ways, even by the person who created them

46. Sketch vs. Prototype Sketch Prototype Invite Attend Suggest Describe
Explore
Refine
Question
Answer
Propose
Test
Provoke
Resolve
Tentative, non committal
Specific Depiction
The primary differences are in the intent

47. Is this a sketch? Why or why not?

48. Is this a sketch? Why or why not?

49. Is this a sketch? Why or why not?

50. Is this a sketch? Why or why not?

51. Is this a sketch? Why or why not?

52. Is this a sketch? Why or why not?

53. Is this a sketch? Why or why not?

54. Forms of Sketching?
Note that the properties Buxton describes doesn’t mention anything about form factor
Can be pencil/pen drawing on paper
Something scraped together in Photoshop
Traced photos
Quick-and-dirty prototyping
Magazine cut-outs
Modifications to existing objects
UI Tools

55. Paper Sketches Advantages Drawbacks support brainstorming
do not require specification of details
designers feel comfortable sketching
can be created when/where needed
back of the napkin
Drawbacks
do not evolve easily
poor support for annotations
force manual translation to computer
do not allow end-user interaction

56. Tracing Photos Tracing over a photo to make it look “sketchy”
Useful for people who can’t draw well
Example: Open a photo in Illustrator and then trace over it
Especially useful for hands

57. UI Tools Software tools like Balsamiq, Axure, or Visual Studio
Drawbacks
Require specification of details
give specific instance of a general idea
e.g., exact widgets, fonts, alignments, colors
designers focus on unimportant details
evaluators focus on wrong issues
Take too much time to use
Poor support for iterative design
Used more for prototyping
We’ll get to this in Prototyping lecture

58. Sketching Critiques
Reflection on the process so far?

59. Why it’s important Ideas are both good and bad
Both are useful in design
By making clear what’s a bad design, we can avoid actually implementing it
Collectively, feedback can turn a good idea into a great idea
Filtering
Brainstorming generates too many ideas to actually implement

60. Filtering: How to do it? Talk about the strengths of the idea
Talk about the weaknesses
Discuss the feasibility of it
Discuss the originality of it
Sort into piles of good, okay, and not possible

61. P2 – Ideation & Sketching
Due next week
As a team, conduct a brainstorming session where you generate at least 4 ideas per person (e.g., 20 total ideas for a 4 person team)
FEEL FREE TO GO FOR MORE
More is better!
As a team, filter down the ideas by discussing their strengths and weaknesses and pick the best three
Resketch these 3 ideas more neatly and provide written justification for why they’re the best

62. Activity: Filtering Practice
Sketches generated from a brainstorm session with my directed research group
Topic: Technology that could support healthy sleep behaviors

63. Break – 10 minutes

64. Readings Discussion
Buxton, W. (2007) Selections from Sketching User Experiences. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, pp
Buxton, W. (2007) It was a dark and stormy night. Sketching User Experiences. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, pp
Moggridge, B. (2007) Futures and alternative nows. Ch. 9 in Designing Interactions. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, pp
Tischler, L. (2001) Seven secrets to good brainstorming. Fast Company Magazine, Feb
Tischler, L. (2001) Six surefire ways to kill a brainstorm. Fast Company Magazine, Feb

65. Next Class Tuesday, February 15th Due Next Week Prototyping
P2 – Ideation
Reflection 6
Sketching, Week 5
3 sketches relating to “Education”
class lectures, assignment turn-ins, elementary school, improving HCDE 518, etc.

66. Group Project Meet Time - ideation