Delft Design Guide -Revised edition. Annemiek van Boeijen
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One means of addressing this issue is to tell several stories. Another way is to express these aspects with a flowchart.
This pertains to a set of methods that help to express and understand existing interactions, and to conceive and develop future ones. When designing for interactive products, user experiences, or services, designers need to envision how user experiences unfold over time, and comprehend the relations between people, products, and their environment.
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References & Further Reading: Van der Lelie, C., 2006. The value of storyboards in the product design process. Personal and ubiquitous computing , 10(2-3), 159-162. / Van der Lugt, R., Postma, C. E., & Stappers, P. J., 2012. Photoboarding: Exploring service interactions with acting-out and storyboarding. Touchpoint: the Journal of Service Design , 4 (2) 2012.
Timeline : Give a visual indication of how long the parts of an interaction take, where it is intense, or emotional, or boring. Visual markers indicate specific moments.
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Written Scenario : Use a few lines of text to tell a story, making clear the where and why a user does something.
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Storyboarding : This is a sequence of pictures to
tell the story, each picture complemented with an annotation to explain the whys and whens of the actors in the story.
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Journey Mapping : E xtend the annotations of storyboards to a series of parallel ‘swimlanes’, each describing how one factor develops through the interaction, for example, the user emotion, actions by technology or service
provider, external conditions, and design criteria. This supports the design team to make visible relations between the factors at points in time or over time, and how one factor may depend on another.
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Flowchart: Flowcharts from software design show the moments where choices are made, and the timeline can follow different paths.
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The Tadrart Acacus prehistoric cave paintings are scattered over a large mountain range in the Sahara Desert. These paintings can be dated back to 12,000 BC and are one of the most significant prehistoric cave paintings, depicting hunting scenes of animals and humans with hunting tools. Below: Boeing art director William Fetter was the first person to draw a human figure using a computer. This figure is known as the ‘Boeing Man’. In 1960, Fetter coined the term ‘computer graphics’ in a description of his work on cockpit design for the Boeing Company.
What & Why? Drawing represents an early sign of culture, an expression of mankind’s unique creative capabilities and an example of our near-exclusive usage of tools. The activity of drawing or scetching has characterised human beings since prehistoric times: it was utilized for communicating long before writing was present and served as a basis for written language.
Drawing supports a range of methods and creativity in general in all stages of the design process. Visualisation helps externalise our thoughts. It serves aesthetic, behavioural, cognitive, and communicative purposes. In a design context, sketching serves these four purposes with a focus on collaboration, cognitive development, and communication. Drawing is a method for developing knowledge, thoughts, concepts, ideas and for communicating these with others such as peers and clients. Use it to discuss or present concepts, or to provoke a reaction. Sketches convey information and provide signature.
The word ‘sketching’ literally meanis ‘improvise’, which characterises the dynamic and developmental function that it has in a design context. The creation, preservation, and transfer of knowledge have always been important functions of drawing and sketching. Especially for designers sketching constitutes an essential asset for their visual language, which is akin to writers using text for communication.
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Mindset: Feel free to use any technique, drawing tool or other means at your disposal to to visualise your observations and thoughts.
How? Artist and painter David Hockney stated that with drawing you can express all kinds of ideas that might otherwise be lost. Art critic John Ruskin said that the discipline of drawing tunes the sensitivity of the drawer to a higher pitch; it refines the drawer’s vision.
Sketches can be representations of either existing things and situations or of conceptual thoughts and imaginary concepts. This limitless medium allows for exploring and creating visions and scenarios that can involve anything.
Designers draw throughout the entire design process. The appearance of the sketch or visual
representation differs according to its purpose. Various factors are involved, such as the designer’s intention, the subject or field, the audience, the type of decision to be made, the direction of the information flow, and the stage of the design process.
The four design stages of Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver (the Double Diamond Model) are taken as a starting point for distinguishing the various process parts for sketching. These stages and the ways in which sketching and visualising can contribute to the stages are discussed in the subsequent sections of this book.
Design Drawing as a Language
References & Further Reading: Eissen, J. J., & Steur, R., 2009. Sketching . Amsterdam: BIS Publishers. / Robertson, S., & Bertling,
T., 2013. How to Draw . Design Studio Press. / Tversky, B. (2011). Visualizing Thought. Topics in Cognitive Science , 3(3), 499-535. /
www.delftdesigndrawing.com/basics.html
Tips & Concerns
Utilize a drawing language that emphasises a well-considered structure, viewpoints and composition using clear lines and tonal values, both for concrete and for abstract representations .
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Sketching requires practice in order for us to use the full potential the method offers.
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Start by drawing basic shapes, and then slowly increase the complexity and creative exploration while practising motor skills and raising your awareness of perspective and composition.
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Maintain and improve your skills; sketch every day!
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See also: Design Drawing in the four stages of this book.
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