Sketching is a really important part of the design process as it is an efficient way of communicating numerous ideas. It can tend to be overlooked as people jump straight to prototyping however this is more high fidelity it ends up with you creating less ideas and outputs than when you sketch on paper first. It is always best to start your sketches on paper as you can iterate quickly and it is a flexible tool which allows people to collaborate.
I really want to focus on using pen and paper to sketch rather than using digital tools like my tablet as it is sometimes nice to be able to step away from screens to let your ideas flow. Sketching doesn’t really require you to be extremely artistic but more be able to think and communicate our ideas and be able to visually represent them neatly using basic shapes. The only way to improve is by lots of practice!
This first exercise we completed in class was a speed drawing class where we had to draw 6 items 3 times within 3 different time limits: 20 seconds, 10 seconds and 5 seconds.
With less and less time for each round the detail of our sketches got less and less however I learned through this that it only takes a 10-20 second sketch to get an idea across.
Nielsen & Norman Group describe a user flow as a set of interactions that describe the typical or ideal set of steps needed to accomplish a common task performed with a product, normally focusing on a specific objective within one product. We can use a user flow to lay out the process how to complete specific goals such as signing up for email updates or updating a profile picture. These are short term goals which can be completed on a shorter timescale such as seconds, minutes or hours with a relatively limited set of interactions. We normally can represent these user flows using low-fidelity wire flows or simple flow charts. These maps capture key user steps and system responses.
For this exercise we had to draw a user flow outlining the basic steps to upload a photo to an Instagram account starting from the log in to the account.
<aside> 💭 This task really made me realise how complicated user flows can really be due to the many options you can choose. For example when uploading a photo you have so many filter options, editing options as well as thinking about if you need to tag anyone, add music or add a location. This is all things we take for granted as we are so used to doing it and the experience flows so well.
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For this exercise we thought about techniques on how to improve our sketches such as the use a thicker pen and using straight lines to make the sketches more comprehensible as well as being thoughtful about the amount of colour you use. Paul gave us three different interfaces to sketch: mobile, watch and desktop, with each sketch restricted to 3 minutes.
With the time limits, this was actually more difficult than expected. For the mobile we sketched an Instagram profile, for the watch we sketched various apple watch screens and for desktop we sketched X / Twitter.
<aside> 💭 This taught me how fast you can produce a quick sketch of an idea however it is still important to be accurate and keep your sketches tidy as with a little extra time, my sketch could actually be a lot neater and accurate and get my ideas across a lot better.
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This exercise was to create a smartphone app that corresponded to a smart plant pot which was a Sensor-Enabled Plant Care System which monitors the plants water, nutrient and light levels . It should include a home screen, add a plant, plant care and check moisture levels and be created for a specific target user.
After reading the brief, my group started off creating a user flow outlining how a potential user would work their way through specific tasks in the app such as adding a plant or checking the levels. This does not take into consideration the users feelings as we are not creating a journey map which focuses on this more.