What if you started your UX process away from a computer?

A case for sketching-first UX

Chris R Becker
UX Collective
Published in
8 min readMar 26, 2022

A low fidelity paper prototype from UX/UI bootcamp at UCI
Low Fidelity Sketch from one of my UX/UI courses

As a Product/UX designer and design educator, I have noticed a few changes in the way designers and students approach thinking through screen problems especially now that we have leaned into Covid for work-from-home and using our computers as our classrooms. Although the internet, group communication tools like Zoom, Slack, Teams, and collaborative software like Figma/Figjam, Miro, Google Docs, etc are fairly easy to use, the physical/digital gap still remains. Of course, we adapt quickly to new tools but they continue to abstract away aspects of what the physical world can afford. I still believe starting with “real” material (paper/pen/glue/cardboard/etc) still has merit in a world that is all too quick to jump straight into digital software.

Start with sketching

The Modulor Man by Le corbusier an illustration of a man with proportions
https://www.iconeye.com/opinion/icon-of-the-month/modulor-man-by-le-corbusier

Over time, I have been attempting to understand a few essential methods for the way we think creatively. As a designer, the way we make impacts the types of problems we can solve and the speed at which we can solve them. The reality is there are different ways to solve problems and not all methods are equal…

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Chris R Becker

Product Designer / Educator / Author. Parent, surfer, maker.

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