Lecture &
reading.

One thing that stood out to me from this week’s lecture and readings is the idea that sketching is not only a way to represent an idea, but also a way to think through it. Before this week, I think I often treated sketching as an early step that I should move through quickly before getting to a more finished version. Especially when I work digitally, I tend to feel that making something look more polished means I am making more progress.

Buxton’s discussion of ambiguity made me rethink this habit. A sketch does not need to be clear, polished, or complete in order to be useful. In fact, part of its value comes from being unfinished. When a sketch is still rough, it feels temporary and open to change. I can redraw it, throw it away, or take it in a completely different direction without feeling that I have lost too much work. Once I spend a lot of time refining something, however, I often become more attached to it. Even if the idea itself is not very strong, the amount of time I have invested can make me less willing to question it.

This connects closely to the lecture’s discussion of reflection-in-action and move making. A sketch is not simply the result of thinking. It becomes part of a conversation between the designer and the thing being made. I make a mark, look at it, notice something, and then make another move. In this sense, the roughness of a sketch is not a weakness. It keeps the conversation open.

I also started to think differently about the 50 iterations exercise. At first, it was easy to think that every iteration should feel like a complete or strong idea. But the readings suggest that this is not really the point. Some iterations may only exist to test a possibility, reveal a problem, or lead to another direction.

They do not all need to survive.
What I am still thinking about is how to find the right level of detail in a sketch. If a sketch is too vague, it may not help us understand the idea. But if it becomes too refined, it may start to feel final and reduce our willingness to explore alternatives. So I think learning how to sketch is also partly about learning when to stop refining and keep an idea open.