Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design

The Anatomy of Sketching

The only true voyage of discovery is not to go to new places, but to have other eyes.

—Marcel Proust

Both sketching and design emerged in the late medieval period, and this was no accident. From this period on, the trend was toward a separation of design from the process of making (Heskett 1980). With that came the need to find the means whereby the designer could explore and communicate ideas. Sketching, as a distinct form of drawing, provided such a vehicle.

The first examples of sketching, as we think of it today, come from Siena, from Mariano di Jacobi detto Taccola (McGee 2004). In the first half of the fifteenth century, he embarked on a four-volume set of books on civil and military technology, called De Ingenisis ...