Exercise 1: Visual Note-Taking
On the very first pre-work practical exercise from this UX/UI Bootcamp with IronHack we have been told to watch a TED Talk by Margaret Gould Stewart (Facebook’s director of product design) called “How Giant Websites Design For You” to apply and practice the visual note-taking way of sketching.
I had never thought of purposely take notes using the visual note-taking technique, but after doing this exercise I realized it has a lot to do with the very first stage of my own natural way of taking notes.
The first time I watched the video I took simple writing notes, trying to organize chronologically the ideas and structure of the TED talk, after reading them I could identify what I understood as the main idea and then secondary information that diverted from it.
Once I had analyzed what the topic was about I tried to organize my written ideas and transform them into something more visual, that captured the essence of the idea but expressed it in a more direct way, randomly drawing it.
In my opinion analyzing the general idea and finding the important information was easy, what it was not so easy was the fact that I had to organize it and draw it in paper.
On my third try I had everything more clear in my mind and found a simpler way to express myself, using only two colors and a well organized sketchnoting.
I am happy with the result but I needed three tries and a lot of thinking in order to achieve it. Hopefully I will get better and faster with time and practice, if you hace any feedback or tips you can leave a comment below.
I hope you have found this process interesting :)
