Doodle Notes: Paying Attention to What Matters Most
I am a designer. I have always been a designer. Before I knew it, I was immersing myself into subjects and projects that have paved a path towards creating products and interactions for people.
Fall 2019, I found myself in Interaction Design 101, a course taught by the revered Professor Dan Hatch, who also dished up some important life lessons. The man puts off a good ‘ole beach boy surfer vibe with design knowledge and talent so ingrained it has become part of who he is. He says things like…
“ Life is iterative, you can always redo things ” — Prof. Hatch
and things like
“ Just get it out there, we just need the MVP and we can rework it and make it better later on ” — Prof. Hatch
I have spent many years beforehand trying to fit myself into a mold of what I thought was required to be successful. It was nothing short of attempting to make no mistakes and quite frankly, impossible. This man’s passion for design, trust in the process and embracing of mistakes has changed my perspective and encouraged me to be brave. To slash the idea of perfectionism and instead, focus on excellence while doing what you love — the key quality I attribute to a huge amount of success within my career.
During those first months, he laughed out loud when I explained how much I overused photoshop and said, “look, you can’t keep doing that…you gotta know illustrator.” Over the course of the past few years and through the COVID pandemic, he has introduced and advanced us through design software and tools like Sketch, XD, Figma, & Adobe cloud software. I have mastered the pen tool and feel very comfortable — in fact even more proficient now than photoshop. He has walked us through the industry design process, how sprints work and tossed us real world projects. We played with heat mapping, conducted qualitative and quantitative research and used and analyzed different design tools that a UXer might use throughout the course of their career.
Professor Hatch introduced me to the concept of taking notes by doodling. Instead of writing down sentences in an outline format, he had us draw pictures and only write down key concepts and ideas.
He insisted that it could improve memory recall. Other claims include increased focus and a calming effect. He had us read a book called Sketchnotes, early on and we were instructed on how to take notes in this way.
Besides saving time and being rather fun, practicing this technique has allowed me to become rather proficient at quickly organizing and prioritizing qualitative data. Anyone that has conducted multiple interviews is aware of the heavy task of filtering through lots of information to connect valuable patterns and insights. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the enormity of information and attempt to capture everything. In fact, you can distract yourself from actually listening when you are too focused on capturing all the words. Pictures on the other hand, can capture much more. In sprints, my team will sketch out our ideas in such a way that it needs minimal explanation, and the note taking has primed my mind in a working, functional way. Sketches are a very quick and inexpensive pre-prototype that can often be played with, tried and tested sooner while the price tag is low.
My professor is an avid fan and supporter of Tesla and sold a multi-million dollar company that he cofounded right here in Silicon Slopes after working in the tech industry as a designer for years. He is also a playful, creative and fun easy going husband and father who has mastered how to take a massive project and whittle it down into fun size easily digestible pieces.
I have learned that perfection is not excellence and that to truly understand and design for humans you must let yourself be one.
Elizabeth is currently studying Interaction Design at Utah Valley University. The following article relates to skills and lessons learned in the course Digital Design Essentials DGM-1220–001 | Fall 2019
