As designers, our job is to come up with elegant solutions to difficult problems. In doing so, we tend to work our way from broad ideas of possible solutions down into the finely crafted details. Knowing how to balance our time between doing exploratory work to identify potentially better solutions and really diving in deep to dial-in the details of a single solution is one of the skills that really makes a seasoned designer stand out.
The tools we use to do design have a big impact on the level of detail in our thinking. Different tools are suitable for different phases of the design process. For initial exploration, people often like to draw by hand, making rough sketches in their notebooks. Others use sketching or wireframing software, like Balsmiq, at this stage. For later in the design process, tools like Sketch or Figma are nice for making very detailed, pixel-accurate designs.
There is a general sense that sketching is good for exploring options. Sketches are fast to make and allow us to explore high-level concepts, like flow and information hierarchy, quickly and easily. And since they are easy to create, they are also easy to discard. Designers don’t fall in love with their sketches.
The downside of sketches is that they are often difficult to user test. Both users and executives tend to have trouble understanding the sketches and…
