Sketching User Experiences (Book Review)
Monday, December 28th, 2009
What brought me to read Sketching User Experiences: getting the design right and the right design by Bill Buxton was an IXDA Keynote Bill Buxton did several years ago. The audio is still available but unfortunately the video has long since failed to work. Nevertheless it was solely on that conversation with interaction designers that drew me to this book.
If any of you have heard Bill speak you will quickly notice that the presentations complement his writing and vice-versa. The passion Bill has for fostering innovation in the business context drums through from start to finish with some invaluable ideas along the way. It challenges the reader to rethink a few essential components of your own methodologies and you will no doubt recognise many of the frustrations and issues incumbent in the teams you’ve already worked alongside. Because its through fostering innovation and daring to fail that great products are made. Too often we fall into the box of comfortability, we start to code on the first day alongside design… not a great outcome.
Also fundamental to the concepts in this book is the term sketching – not meaning pencil sketching so much as ideation sketching. Cheap, fast, to the point design experimentation. You’ll need to get your head around the difference between sketching in this context and fast prototyping along with the literacy to distinguish when each is useful or redundant. And ultimately you have to shift your perception of what we do – for example as software developers and web designers – from product creators to experience designers. Because the whole ballgame starts to change when we rethink our definition…
