UI14 playback 1 - sketchboards, new technique for creative ideas

User Interface conference is a widely recognized conference organized by UIE Jared Spool once every year. It covers the biggest issues in the world of design, gives workshops, seminars in the perspective of usability, user testing, information architecture, persona, etc.

New technique for creative ideas is a full day workshop by Leah Buley, an experience designer in Adaptive Path. The workshop used an interactive way to gave us a full new perspective to fast design creating, sharing and exploring.

So here comes this great practice of sketchboards, which fixes the wrongs in wireframes.

Sketchboards
• Avoids unnecessary detail (so you don!t waste time documenting what you haven’t yet decided on)
• Reveals the best of multiple solutions (so you can be sure that you!re moving forward with the right design, not just the first design that comes to mind)
• Gets everyone!s input and buy-in (so the design can move forward with many supporters)

3 Types of Sketch:
- Icons and symbols add another level of meaning to text - they’re like visual summaries, or bullet points.
- Environment sketches give context to an idea by showing the user’s perspective - bringing in real people to your sketches can be a powerful orienting tool.
- Interaction sketches. They let you figure out how your idea works on the page, and then communicate that to other people.

sketching tools/supplies:
1-up and 6-up template, highlighter, sharpie markers - fat, regular and small, grey marker, sticky notes, scissors, tapes, etc.

Phases of sketching:
- ideation: e.g. coming up with lots of ideas
- big picture thinking: e.g. how to structure sketchboards
- collaborative critique: how to get the group to say the hard stuff

Case study - Sweet Potato, a dinning, cooking, diet iphone application oriented to healthy life

There are a number of products and web sites that cover aspects of what Sweet Potato
will cover. The Daily Plate from Livestrong helps you see the nutritive value of what you!re eating. But compared to the savory, life affirming experience of eating a nutritious meal, counting calories with the Daily Plate seems boring. We want to design a product that feels like more than just a calorie counter.

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