Visual Thinking

I’ve recently been approached and asked if I could give visual thinking workshops for people working with UX und IX - sketching wireframes and the likes. So I went and did some research on the web on what’s already out there and found this story by a guy called Brett Lutchman. It nicely demonstrates the power of pen and paper during the concept phase.

Often […] sessions are captured on a whiteboard with pics taken after. In several occasions, the flash got in the way of the pic (because of the whiteboard reflection) and information was lost.
Enter the Sketchpad.
After making the decision to use a sketchpad, one of the first thoughts that came to mind was “Why didn’t I think of this in the first place?”.
In one meeting, while trying to explain a concept on paper, the pen was snatched out of my hand from the marketing coordinator with the statement “Here let me show you something”. Pretty soon, everyone around the table was hunched over while drawing or pointing to the pad.
Within the same week, 4 of the 6 people who were in that meeting now had the exact same pad I had.
[…] Try dragging in your laptop and visualizing everything on the screen in a […] session - doesn’t happen. Also notice how many times a URL is shot across the table. Someone may say something like “Well soandso.com has a good example of this”- And people begin to scramble for a pen and paper to write it down.

A sketchpad:
1. Can be photocopied and passed around.
2. Is light and readily available to use.
3. Allows others to jump in on the process speedily
4. Makes you look ‘Old School’.
5. Allows you to capture ‘wild’ thoughts immediately (‘Buy flowers for the
wife and pick up milk”)
6. Captures real-time thought processes whle allowing others to follow along
7. Adds an additional 99 years to your lifespan and stops heart burn.

There are flickr groups for UX sketches if you’re interested in this

http://www.flickr.com/groups/uxsketch/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/uxsketches/