Five Design-Sheets: Creative Design and Sketching for Computing and Visualisation

This book describes a structured sketching methodology to help you create alternative design ideas and sketch them on paper. The Five Design-Sheet method acts as a check-list of tasks, to help you think through the problem, create new ideas and to reflect upon the suitability of each idea. To complement the FdS method, we present practical sketching techniques, discuss problem solving, consider professional and ethical issues of designing interfaces, and work through many examples.

Five Design-Sheets: Creative Design and Sketching for Computing and Visualization is useful for designers of computer interfaces, or researchers needing to explore alternative solutions in any field. It is written for anyone who is studying on a computing course and needs to design a computing-interface or create a well-structured design chapter for their dissertation, for example. We do acknowledge that throughout this book we focus on the creation of interactive software tools, and use the case study of building data-visualization tools. We have however, tried to keep the techniques general enough such that it is beneficial for a wide range of people, with different challenges and different situations, and for different applications.

Table of Contents

Part I Think
Chapter 1 Introduction: Think, Prep, Sketch
Chapter 2 Overview Of The Five Design-Sheets (Fds)
Chapter 3 Thoughts, Ideas, Problems And Solutions
Chapter 4 Social, Ethical And Other Considerations To Interface Design

Part II Prep
Chapter 5 Sketching Design Skills
Chapter 6 Graphical Marks And Semiology For Sketching
Chapter 7 Creative Thinking, Creativity And Ideation

Part III Sketch
Chapter 8 Sheet 1 Of The Five Sheets
Chapter 9 Sheets 2, 3 And 4 (The Middle Sheets)
Chapter 10 Sheet 5 (Design Realisation)
Chapter 11 Five Design-Sheet Examples And Applications