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Sketching

What it is

Sketching is fast, low-fidelity drawing to think an idea through before committing it to a design tool. Speed and disposability are the point: a sketch exists to be rejected, annotated and redrawn in the time it would take to open an application. Six rough variants beat one careful one.

Why it matters

A design tool makes ideas look finished long before they are, and a polished mock-up attracts comments about colour when the layout is still wrong. Sketching keeps the conversation at the level of structure — where things go, what the user sees first, how many steps there are. It is also the only design activity cheap enough to do dozens of times, which is what finding a good option requires. Anyone who can draw a rectangle and an arrow can do it; drawing skill is irrelevant and should not be a reason to wait.

Core ideas

Volume before quality

Produce many variants of the same screen in one sitting. Six is a good target for half an hour; more if the problem is unsettled. The value is in the comparison, not in any single drawing.

Round 1 (5 min each, 6 sheets):
1 split header with search on the right
2 single column list, filters above
3 two-pane list and detail
4 card grid
5 table with inline edit
6 single action screen — one button

Constrain the tool to constrain the detail

Pencil, marker or one drawing colour. No colour fills, no icons from a library, no real content. When the medium cannot express polish, the discussion stays on structure.

Annotate rather than refine

Write questions and constraints on the sketch: “what if 40 items?”, “needs the customer’s name”, “tap target too small here”. Annotations survive the sketch and carry into the next round.

Throw them away

A sketch that is kept becomes precious. Photograph the set, pick the elements worth keeping, redraw. Keeping the originals encourages defending them.

Sketch in the group

Hand every participant paper and five minutes per round. Sketches on a shared table, silently read, then dot-voted, beat any discussion where the first confident speaker sets the frame.

Practice

Six-up one screen

Take one screen from your current work. Draw six different layouts of it in thirty minutes — five minutes each, no erasing, using only a rectangle for the screen and lines for content.

Done when: you have six numbered sheets and can name what each one is optimising for.

Sketch a flow you cannot draw well

Choose a task with six steps. Draw the whole flow as small rectangles connected by arrows, one sheet, then hand it to someone and ask them to walk it out loud.

Done when: they reach the end without asking which way the arrows go, using only your sketch.

Common mistakes

  • Opening a design tool first — the idea is committed before it is explored and every later change costs more; fix: sketch the first three rounds on paper.
  • Making the sketch pretty — detail invites critique of style instead of structure; fix: keep one colour and rough shapes, and stop when the structure is legible.
  • Drawing one option — the first idea becomes the design by default; fix: always produce at least three, ideally six, before discussing any.
  • No annotations — the constraint you noticed while drawing is lost; fix: write the question on the sheet next to the part it affects.
  • Keeping every sketch — the pile grows and each drawing becomes a position to defend; fix: photograph, select, redraw, recycle the paper.

Go deeper

Worked examples

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