If there’s one thing that’s universal about UX designers everywhere, it’s that we are always sketching.
The Oxford dictionary defines the word sketch as “make a rough drawing of.” That’s the main idea we want to get across. It’s rough. It’s not meant to be pristine and look perfect. It’s meant to rapidly translate your thoughts onto paper.
There’re so many reasons why we sketch:
• We sketch to explore concepts.
• We sketch to communicate our thoughts and ideas to others. Concepts can be tricky to explain with words. Sketching helps to get the meaning across.
• We sketch to get feedback on our ideas. Sketching can be a fantastic way to validate your concepts before you spend time wireframing.
• We also sketch to hone our ideas, to make them better, to refine them into something pure. There’s almost always a way you can improve your designs. Sketching can help you get there quickly.
• Which is another reason why we sketch, because it’s fast and saves you time. Switching between different ideas and concepts while wireframing is tough. You have to create every object from scratch, which takes time. If you decide to move something, that takes even more time. Plus, once you start wireframing, you naturally want to make it look nicer, which is a huge mistake early in the process.Sketching eliminates these problems.
And the best part? Almost anyone can sketch.
Even if you feel lost or like your ideas are stupid, just put your pen down and start drawing bad ideas. Keep exploring. We have to look at all possible options and iterate. To do that, we sketch.
