Skecthboarding, part two
Following on from my mass post-it note session, Sketchboarding, a couple of hours of clarity , I retreated back to my Mac to produce a sitemap. Using the sketchboard method, learned from Leah Buley at UX London 2010, allowed for rapid and easy re-working of my thoughts. With clarity of vision, I moved to creating a sitemap using a mix of Omni Outliner and Omni Graffle. With this run out and stuck together, all 12 A3 sheets of it, I returned to our Ideas Room and stuck it up on the wall.
This gives me the opportunity to review the whole site structure in one go, rather than just the section I can see on screen. It’s time to break open another pack of Post-It notes and start working out the different page types and what type of content should appear on them.
Using Post-It’s makes it really quick to change my mind and move things around. While I’m moving these page elements around like this I’m also thinking of how they might look and work. In the past I’ve tended to sketch up one page at a time, then review what’s missing from each. Although that’s a process that has worked quite well this method is so much quicker. It also allows time to ask other key product members for their input before anything is committed to. Another bonus is that it helps to highlight if there are any page types or sections missing from the sitemap.
Now that I have a good idea of where this is going, it’s time to break out the markers. Now the fun really begins.
Using the sitemap along with the page element groups that I worked out with the Post-It notes, I move to sketching out loose wireframes for the different page types. This is also part of Leah’s Sketchboarding process, although I had been using way of working for a long time before attending her workshop. However, it’s always nice to know that your own process’ are valid. All of the sketchboarding up to this point speeds this step up considerably as so much of the thinking has been done.
These small sketch’s also help to make sure nothing has been missed. I was at this point I realised that I had missed a small, but vital section from the sitemap. Time to revisit my OmniGraffle documents and revise with my new discovers.
I’ll keep you all informed as I progress with this project.
