Visual Note-Taking Exercise
So I’ve enrolled in Ironhack’s UX/UI bootcamp for the next October term and I’ve got 40h of prework to get through with a month to go. So the time has come to finally put my head down and start learning this new exciting realm of design!
For the first prework exercise, we were to practice our visual note-taking skills by creating “sketchnotes” while watching the Ted Talk by Facebook’s director of product design, Margaret Gould Stewart: How Giant Websites Design For You (watch below).
To keep alert and to figure out which points to jot down was a challenge at first — especially while trying to sketch at the same time.
First attempt:

First of all I forgot to title the notes, which I crammed in later. For the first attempt I tried to illustrate elements as much as I could while listening, and I definitely had to go back a few times to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I was able to sketch, but probably wasn’t able to organize the points very well.
Second attempt:

I felt as if I was able to organize the notes so that they flow better this time, rather than having random scattered points.
Sketnotes definitely makes your notes pop and more readable, though I still find it quite challenging to note down all of the important content while simultaneously listening to a lot of information.
Making sketchnotes will definitely make you focus on listening — though probably for the first few times you might feel anxious about whether you’re doing it right. It was a new and interesting exercise to do, hopefully it will get better with practice.
Writing/publishing content on the web is also something very new and out of the ordinary for me, these stories surely will improve over time.
Looking forward to exercise Part 2 as the countdown to Berlin begins!
Mayumi
