Let’s start Sketch-Noting!

Victoria Aróstegui
Sep 7, 2018 · 2 min read

This is my first time posting here in Medium and I’m happy to start it with my first exercise for Ironhack. I’m very excited about it and I’m sure it will be a great experience!


Visual Note-Taking

In my experience, making sketches always makes easier for you and others to understand a problem and find a solution. Many times we have great ideas in mind that are hard to explain in words since, as I mentioned, they are mere ideas. I strongly believe that these sketches help us focus not only in words, but concepts or ideas that many times can slip away while we’re trying to pick up as many detailed wordy content as possible.

We all know how to draw, better or worse, but it’s something innate in every human being. The truth is, as Sergio Mínguez from class mentioned, the more you practice, the better you get at it. That’s why I decided to get a sheet of paper and a pen, and start practicing!

Here we go!

Somehow I felt like back in school when you learnt how to summarize a unit, and pick the most relevant information about a chapter.

So I decided no to bother too much on the aesthetics and focus on my note-taking. Therefore, I decided to do it in black and white. I already had enough with that.

I listened several times the talk of Margaret Gould Stewart, which I found very inspiring. It’s amazing how every time I find something new in it! Another amazing fact is that this visual note taking made me fully focus on the talk and totally engaged with the speaker.

Let me now show you how things went:

To be honest the result of the two sketches I’ve done are not very different from one another. However, I did need to stop the video on several ocassions on the first one. The mental process to analysing the information I was hearing, and deciding how to put it on my sheet of paper was much slower. Knowing what the video was about and seeing several times helped my practice.Therefore, I did gain speed for the second one!

Sketch n. 1
Sketch n. 2

Let’s keep it up!

I’m happy with the result, and I certainly need to keep practicing to continue improving my note-taking. Let’s now continue with the pre-work and keep sketching!

Victoria Aróstegui

Written by

UX/UI Designer, experience using agile methodologies. MBA professional and entrepreneur. Worked with start-ups in creative industries in Spain and UK.

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