6.4 Sketch Boards
arrange your sketches on poster boards to share them with others
Once you have created a set of sketches for a particular project, you should take every opportunity to present them to and share them with others. Telling others stories about your sketches will clarify your thinking about them. Questions people ask (and your answers to them) will often reveal new insights. Overall, suggestions and critique by others will lead to inspiration, uncover problems you have not yet considered, and introduce new ideas.
This chapter shows how to prepare and structure sketch boards and several ways to share them with others.
Preparation Method 1: Foam Core Poster Sheets
1. Select a Canvas: Foam Core Boards
You need a large empty “canvas” to arrange your sketches into a sketch board. To make your sketch boards portable, you can use large foam core sheets to put your sketches on. Using these sheets makes it easier for you to take them to any location where you would like to discuss them.
Keep Originals
If you re-use sketches from your sketchbook, take photo copies so the originals stay in the book.
Arrange all relevant sketches on the poster sheet.
The spatial layout of sketches on the poster boards helps to structure the sketches. When the sketches belong to similar themes, you may want to group them into clusters. For example, in this photo the sketches have been rearranged into four clusters according to the most important project goals. We also used sticky notes to classify the clusters.
Preparation Method 2: Sticky Notes and Whiteboards
1. Arrange Sticky Note Sketches on Whiteboard
If you don’t need portable sketch boards, you can put your sketches onto a whiteboard or wall. If you sketch using sticky notes, you can later stick them directly onto the whiteboard. For example, the photo below illustrates a person putting up several sketched storyboard sequences onto a whiteboard. He uses different paper colors (blue, orange, white) as clear indicators to which sequence a sketch belongs.
Again, you can rearrange and sort your sketches once they are up on the board. Using the sticky notes makes rearranging your sketches even easier. This is particularly useful for sketches illustrating a time sequence such as storyboards.
Share Your Sketches with Others
The sketch boards can be a good starting point to trigger discussions about your current project. Here are a few suggestions of where you can share your sketches.
Arrange Them Around Your Desk
You can also put the sketch boards for your current projects around your work desk. The visibility of the sketches can inspire you when glancing at them, and are a good starting point for conversations and discussions when fellow co-workers or passers by meet you in your office.
Since the foam core boards are very light weight, you can easily hang them on any wall using thin wire or double sided tape, or put them on a shelf leaning against the wall. Below you can see the desk of one of the co-authors of this book, surrounded by poster boards with sketches of different ongoing projects.
Donut Breaks
To make it easier for you to invite people for discussing your sketches and ideas in a casual setting, you can organize a “donut break”. Invite your co-workers or fellow students to come during a break where they can eat free donuts while providing you feedback and suggestions about your sketched ideas. It is amazing what people will do for a donut!
Discuss Them During Meetings
Bring your sketch boards to meetings where you plan to discuss your projects. You can then refer to particular sketches when explaining the project ideas, and gather feedback about the initial design (also see the chapter of how to organize design critiques).
Place Them in Public Areas
Depending on the project and type of sketches, you might also want to make your idea sketches even more visible to your group or organization. To do so, place your sketch boards in the hallway or any other public area (such as a lounge or a library room) of your group. Gould (1988) calls this “hallway and storefront methodology”.
Customer Location
You can place your sketch boards at customer locations (see page 99 of Gould, 1988). This way, you increase the visibility of your early design sketches to the people who will later use your system.
You Now Know
By applying the techniques presented in this chapter you can create sketch boards and gain new insights by structuring and categiorizing your collections of sketches. To increase the visibility of your sketched ideas and to motivate others to provide feedback and suggestions, you can now apply one or more of the presented sharing techniques.