The readings this week emphasized sketches and the design process. I was happy to see the repeated suggestion that you don’t have to be “good at drawing” to sketch because I am definitely not good at drawing and that gave me some confidence to do it anyway. It also occurred to me that a non-verbal way of communicating ideas would be helpful in general but paticularly at ITP given the number of international students and group projects. In addition, I really appreciated the concept of local hill climbing at the expense of the “global” maxima. I feel like I’ve already experienced this in some of my ICM work, where a particular problem was wasting a lot of time only to change course and produce similar functionality in a fraction of the time. — The second reading , by Tom Igoe, also dealt with the design process and essentially asked aspiring interactive artists to realize that a truly interactive concept can’t be completely defined or contained by it’s creator. Too explicit an interaction deprives the experience of discovery and a truly two way interaction. This lesson is taught to ITP students in many cases when they walk up to the screens displaying projects in the hallways. Outside of the end of semester shows most of these screens are unlabeled and up to the casual viewer to determine the “purpose” and decide for themselves what they are supposed to “get” from it. It’s an interesting challenge to see what can be left unsaid and still be heard.
Buxton, Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook
Igoe, Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen
One of the things I find valuable about the “Sketching User Experiences” workbook is exactly what you point out: it emphasizes that the act of sketching is what communicates, rather than the result of sketching. It’s also useful for some of the brainstorming exercises, which are also basically ways to communicate an idea. When you’re dealing with experience, there’s no complete way to communicate an experience without, well, experiencing it. So developing as many different skills as you can to get the idea across beforehand becomes necessary.