As designers, sketching will never fail us. Science has proved that visuals are processed 60,000x faster than words, they are 43% more effective and 90% of visual information is translated to the brain. This is why sketch noting is often more effective to remember lectures, presentations or webinars. Sketching doesn't need to be in detail, simple sketches still translate the same ideas. To show this we did a short exercise of sketching simple icons, in 20sec/10sec/5sec. It is clear to see that even when the limit was 5 seconds it is clear what each of the icons are.
In a project, it is a good idea to start on paper as sketches are faster, cheaper, flexible, self-saving and collaborative. Sometimes it is better to prioritise communicating ideas over neatness. We can sketch interfaces but we can also quickly sketch user flows to build our understanding of how a user may move through our interfaces and get the logic correct. This can be completed very simply such as the version below of the process to upload media onto instagram...
Or we can develop a flow including basic interface sketches such as the version below...
Some other things to note inlcude
Millers law states ideas that the average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.
George Miller asserted that the span of immediate memory and absolute judgment were both limited to around 7 pieces of information. The main unit of information is the bit, the amount of data necessary to make a choice between two equally likely alternatives. Likewise, 4 bits of information is a decision between 16 binary alternatives (4 successive binary decisions). The point where confusion creates an incorrect judgment is the channel capacity. In other words, the quantity of bits which can be transmitted reliably through a channel, within a certain amount of time.
Things we can learn from this law is to not use the “magical number seven” to justify unnecessary design limitations, we can organise content into smaller chunks to help users process, understand, and memorise easily and we should remember that short-term memory capacity will vary per individual, based on their prior knowledge and situational context.
A quick exercise to show how sketching interfaces can build understanding was to develop a series of interfaces that were about plants and plant care. We had 3o mins in our groups to develop a basic idea of what each section could look like - I think out team was successful in completing this task and incorporating the users flow through the app. This process was useful for me to see how in 30mins a basic idea can be developed into interface sketches. See the final sketches below :
