Sketching as a UXD Process
Sketching plays a very crucial part in our Design process at Phionike. It lies in that sweet spot between Journey Maps and Wireframes.
Getting Started
We gather the entire team at our studio and present everyone with all the findings for the project. We start with understanding the various data we have from Primary research and Secondary research. After forming stories around them we do have our journey maps planned out, which makes sure we are building the solution around user needs. At this point of time persona comes in handy too if the team starts to lose direction in any manner.
Understanding the Scenario
These solutions then we try to scale to our understanding of the scenario. Every member of the team has an understanding of the outcome and sketches their idea on paper. At this point, we make sure everyone is comfortable in doing this process by telling them we’re focusing on outcome and message being communicated, and not the quality of the sketching. With that in mind, our team breaks down the number of solutions they have and sketch it out. To keep everyone aligned, we timebox the entire exercise.
Timeboxing is crucial because it puts everyone in the framework to think quickly and pen down their ideas. These help people in our team to sort their ideas quickly. Separate good ideas from bad ones are essential at the individual level, however, it is also necessary to make sure that overthinking doesn’t occur. Overthinking is a big obstacle for this exercise, so we make sure we give people permission to fail.
Presenting the sketches
A presentation is a great way to understand the ideas and insight of your team. On a personal level, speaking out your idea makes you quickly validate them at a team level and as a long-term exercise, it enables people to think creatively and validate the ideas.
Practising this has enabled to grow as problem solvers and enable a better creative collaboration.
Each team member gets a 2 minute to present their work and at the end of it, we ask others to rate the solution on a scale of 5 and also note down the question that they would have for the presenter.
Brainstorming & Documenting the outcome
After the presentation, we set aside some time for discussion for various ideas being presented and delibrate around it. During this, we have encourage rebutals and encourage people to not be too attached to their ideas.
On a closing note,we document our final discussion and move towards making these solutions more tangible.
We keep on experimenting and evolving our process. If you have anything to add or suggest please do reach out below, creative discussions makes us all better :)
Further reading:
If you want to get more insight into our Design Process, follow this link to our case study http://www.phionike.com/single-case-study.html
