Foreword to Sketching in Human Computer Interaction, by Makayla Lewis and Miriam Sturdee, Springer 2024.
Sketches have been an important part of interaction design since the earliest days of digital computing. Initially this may have been because of a lack of computer-based prototyping, indeed even code was usually initially sketched using flow diagrams. However, the benefits of low-fidelity prototyping also became evident early, with paper-based methods as well as tools, notably DENIM, that emulated this. Sometimes sketches are because you do not know sufficient detail, but they are also because you often do not want too much detail. As Buxton and others have argued, the very incompleteness of a sketch cries out to our imagination, we can fill in the gaps as we please, or simply accept the vagueness … which is itself a form of abstraction.
Sketches are of course used extensively to draw the contents of displays of digital devices, but they equally allow one to draw the device itself, or the context in which it is used. This has been an issue that has concerned me for more than twenty years, encouraging students to draw not just inwards towards the screen, outwards to encompass the direct users, other people around, and whether they are sitting or standing, indoors or outdoors, in rain or sunshine. More recently it became clear that most of the tools used by professional user-experience designers focus solely on the screen content, and even product-design students jump straight into wireframes, without thinking about blue foam or even CAD models. Sketching is needed more than ever.
Of course, one of the barriers to sketching, and why many reach instantly for wireframe tools, is fear – embarrassing memories of school art lessons, where one learnt that there were those who were artistic, visited by the muses at birth, and those, the majority of us, who were passed over. Try telling that to the pre-school five-year old given a crayon or pencil, or even those in 19th century where line sketching and painting were seen as one of the normal accomplishments of an educated person.
It is thus wonderful to see this book, addressing this myth of the art-less, and reminding us, as our five-year-old selves knew, that we can all draw. Makayla and Miriam are perfectly placed to do this, not so much because of their own sketching abilities, but because of the way they have been training others, particularly in their popular CHI courses.
The chapters take you step-by-step from the basic elements of sketches to more complete illustrations and issues including accessibility. As befits the topic, the book is beautifully illustrated throughout; indeed, it is worth having simply to look at. However, I hope you do more than look, and work though the chapters, not to create da Vinci masterpieces, but to create your own sketches that communicate, engage and excite.
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Sketching in Human Computer Interaction
by Makayla Lewis and Miriam Sturdee