Why Use Illustrations In Research Publications?
For the last 3 months, I’ve been working as a design research intern at Weave Lab. My area of focus has been UX/UI design. Having completed my recent research project, I have had an amazing experience with a lot of learning and insights to gain from. One of the key learning was how deeply the illustrations can affect the overall quality, look and feel of the paper. Personally, I feel that the HCI research community needs to leverage the power of illustrations more for the publications. Why do I think so?
Lesser efforts
Illustrations provide me the kind of freedom that can be quite challenging in the case of images. They are the best way to capture visual ideas quickly and build up on that. Getting images can be a cumbersome job. I need to have usage rights for images available online or click my own. To click my own image, I need to find models. The face of the models have to be blurred and re-creating the exact scene I have visualized can be challenging. Also, I have to start all over again if I need any change. A good practice can be to start with a basic illustration sketch and continue refining it according to our need.
Keep it simple and focused
Project Jacquard uses illustration to showcase complex scenarios using a simple sketch
Images can have extra information. It became quite hard for me to bring focus to a certain area of an image or show a complex scenario. Illustrations allowed me to simplify these by following a set style with a color scheme. This made the paper look quite clean and fun to read as well. After trying a few illustration styles, I found that using simple outlines worked best for my case. It is better to avoid too many details or colors and follow a hierarchy. Minimal art style always suits me the best. Project Jacquard did a great job for their banner image. It illustrates five scenarios in a single illustration with focus on the interaction. The sketch is simple yet quite abstract. It is interesting to note- since the sketch is made of simple outlines, a single color can bring focus to the desired area. This keeps the illustration minimal and effective. Same results would be impossible to achieve through actual images.
Better way to convey your idea
I was reading through the related works to see how researchers show interactions. I found several examples where images failed to highlight the interaction due to its noisy background. For instance, the recent paper from Weave Lab- Gehna: Exploring the design space of jewelry as an input modality, which got accepted to CHI’19, used images to show various interactions possible with jewelry. These images were noisy and sometimes, it was hard for me to understand the interaction shown. I picked an interaction image I found confusing and made its illustration. The result is shown above. I find the simple sketch on right far more informative and far less busy than the image on left.
Easy to animate
Illustrations are easy to animate. The image on the left is an image from paper- Gehna which shows On-skin touch around the neck interaction. I made an illustration of this interaction and tried to animate it(right). The video submission I made for my project largely consisted of these animated figures. This saved me from the hassle of shooting the perfect shot I envisioned.
What I follow
I use Adobe Illustrator for my illustrations. Sketch can be an alternative for Mac OS users. I start with Pen tool to make a simple outline of my figure and then use Direct Selection tool to modify the sketch. As I said earlier, I try to keep sketches as minimal as possible. I make figures with white fill and black strokes. I experiment with different stroke width and weights. Personally, I like to make stroke width at the ends thinner as it adds sharp look to the sketch. I always decide on a color scheme and follow it throughout. My go-to-scheme is white for general figures, grey for lesser focused area and a bright color for more focused area. Stroke color is mostly black. For animated gif, I use Abode After Effects.
A quick tip- if you are new to illustrations, it is easier to draw figures by tracing. Get an image of the posture you want to draw, place it on your artboard, lock it in the background and draw over it.
I encourage researchers to try this. Its easy to learn as tons of tutorials are available online. YouTube has lot of channels dedicated to illustrator or after effects.
