Today was awesome. Why, you ask? Because the class I'm auditing titled "User Interface Prototyping Design Clinics" is amazing. Storytime:
During the first hour, we discussed the design process, and exactly what we (and other big thinkers in the industry) thought "prototyping" was. We noted that it could demonstrate a piece of interaction, how something looked, or how something functioned. It's easiest to make a prototype that does just one of the three, and hardests to create one that does all three. We also brainstormed random things for this year's CHI Student Design Competition (CHI is the ACM Special Interest Group (SIG) on Computer-Human Interaction, my field's largest and most prestigious conference). In what could almost be considered unfair, the design problem this year is "...to design an object, interface, system, or service intended to help us appreciate our differences." OH THAT SOUNDS RIGHT UP BERKELEY'S ALLEY! We thought about differences between people, contexts in which people people would benefit from appreciating each other's differences, and what sort of users would value such a system. In what would probably have insulted one of my friends who truly loves diversity, one of the students noted that we should be careful to avoid overemphasizing differences, as they can carry a certain amount of stigma.
I'll also note that I successfully ordered lunch for the lab from SF Soup Co. during the first hour of lecture via my phone, saving us from having a foodless lunch seminar. But that's offtopic.
The second hour was where the class got really awesome. Lora, the graduate student instructor for the class (also one of the senior members of the BiD lab, where I currently sit), is getting her PhD studying what she refers to as "Design Doodling." Basically, the quick sketches to show off an idea that are guaranteed not to get any better after 3 minutes. And we spent the rest of the period getting everyone brought up to speed at the super-basic art skills that would help us draw up our ideas more clearly.
We started with points on opposite ends of a sheet of paper, and practiced drawing straight lines. Suggested: place pen(cil) on point one. Keep eyes on point two. Connect in a single swift stroke.
Next was concentric circles. Toy around with which direction you prefer to move your arm, and where you prefer to start and stop the motion. You'll get a feel for how you have to move your arm for circles of various sizes. If I took the time to compare with a circle drawn with a compass, my circles are probably skinnier at the ordinal directions than the cardinal ones. But I'm working on it.
Stick figures: Drawing people (or parts thereof) gives an intuitive sense of scale to pictures that doesn't hit home the same if you merely label them with dimensions. Traditional xkcd style stick figures are unfortunately very inflexible. It's hard to make them look at things, bend their bodies, sit, or demonstrate anything to do with clothing. As a result, Lora suggested "star people:" draw the head, place pencil on neck, and add limbs until you have four. These you can at least put pockets on. For even better poses, the "tunic + pants" approach can be deformed and shown in many orientations.
Hands tend to show up a lot in user interface mockups, since a lot of interactions involve *gasp* manually manipulating something. As a result, it's a good idea to learn how to draw hands. They don't have to be photorealistic - just squint and draw the big blobs. Best quote of the day: "In the worst case, you have a template for a hand attached to you!" I cracked up.
Faces: you will learn to draw 12 different emotions. Draw three rows of four circles each. Add dot eyes in roughly the center of each face. Top row gets mouths with edges pointing up, middle row gets flat horizontal line mouths, and bottom row gets frowny curves. First column gets regular horizontal eyebrows (like ‾ ‾), second column gets up-pointing eyebrows (/ \), third column gets down-pointing eyebrows (\ /), and fourth column gets one eyebrow raised and one regular (‾ \). Congratulations! You now have:
| happy | cute | mischievous | flirty |
| meh | nervous | frustrated | confused |
| sad | worried | angry | completely lost |
Sounds: how do you visualize sounds? You can use ♫ ♩ ♪ ♪ for music. You can draw vibration as wiggle lines. You can draw speech bubbles around things, even Onomatopoeia. We were tasked with drawing a cell phone ringing with a call. I also thought to add rays of majesty where the display was illuminated.
Practice: draw a picture of a person jumping on a trampoline. And you know what? Using all the advice given over the past hour, it was quite clear that there was a person, and he was having a good time jumping on a trampoline. The anime exclamation point over his head makes you aware of his alertness. No one else in the class was familiar with the concept. WHAT? ‾(°_o)/‾
So. I can't draw. I have never considered myself a good artist or even to have good handwriting. But thanks to one hour, I'm comfortable enough to draw design doodles.
I can't help but hope that all the seminars I go to will be this good.