Design activity #5: sketching
A sketch is nothing more than putting a smidgen of effort behind an idea, progressing one small
step toward seeing how one’s thought might work in practice. Now that we have a sense of our
subject, our position on the subject, and our target audience (from the Learning activity), an
evolving idea of what the user experience with our collection might incorporate (from the
personas and scenarios of the Envisioning activity), and a start at figuring out a design strategy
(via the brief and the Strategizing activity) we can begin to synthesize all of these swirling
thoughts and sketch our collection experience into a more concrete existence.
For designers, initial sketches function as low-effort idea generators, similarly to your initial
drafts of personas and scenarios. The goal is to give an idea enough structure to see what it
reveals about the design situation and to invite comment, from oneself and others. A sketch is an
opportunity to expand on selected aspects of a design while for the moment ignoring others.
Most of the literature on sketching comes from product design and architecture, and notions of
sketching focus on the depiction of physical objects and representations of the built environment.
However, information architects and user interface designers also sketch, often with less visual
emphasis. Web site maps and wireframes show structural components in schematic form, and are
a form of sketch. Software menus and commands may be mapped out as text hierarchies, in
preliminary sketch form. A classificationist might “sketch” out categories and relationships in a
taxonomy or thesaurus. At the beginning of a project, these representations are rough and
tenuous, ready to be changed or scrapped. As the project continues and the design begins to
solidify, the sketches become more detailed and represent the results of one’s various design
decisions (closer to Buxton’s memory drawings). As Buxton emphasizes, sketches at various
levels of sophistication are useful for communicating ideas to others and soliciting feedback (as
with Buxton’s presentation drawings). Eventually, more refined sketches supplement
specifications and facilitate implementation (analogous to Buxon’s technical drawings), and
document intended features and uses (Buxton’s description drawings).
Initially, your sketches should be just that; loose, disposable, and multiple. As with Sketch-orama, try a few different means toward the goals articulated in your brief and scenarios. If the
sketching process illuminates some glaring holes in your previous work, excellent! You should be
more worried if it doesn’t do that. By the end of the project, your sketch will be more like a
presentation drawing; it will be coherent and consistent, and show enough to clarify what your
video library would look like, if you had the extra months to implement your entire vision.
A note of caution here: even at the end of this class project, your sketch is not meant to represent
a final product. Your goal is not to produce a library of 30 videos! Your goal is to show what,
given the time and resources, your final product would look like. The sketch is one aspect of that
vision. Your scenarios and brief complement and expand upon the sketch, filling out your
intended design.
Although your final sketch will be “drawn” using the Open Video Digital Library Toolkit
environment, we will begin with paper sketches to encourage multiple potential design pathways.
Exploring several directions at once seems to facilitate creativity and result in stronger designs
(Dow, et al, 2009).
For the next class, March 24, bring three sets of sketches that show three different alternate
designs. Each set of sketches should depict a potential home page (with browsing categories,
featured videos, and collection ideas), a page for an individual collection, and an individual video
record.
For your final sketch, you must implement all the open video toolkit features described in the
outline given for the brief, in the Strategizing activity instructions. If you want to include, as part
of your design, additional elements not possible in the toolkit environment, you may describe
those in your scenarios, or include additional paper sketches, or both of these options.
Another note of caution: do not feel constricted to use any toolkit features in the way you might
think they are “intended” to be used. For example, you might use the Roles metadata to describe
whether a video is produced by a Corporation, an Academic, Local Government, or an Individual.
Whatever! Bend it to your will.