Mark Baskinger, Carnegie Mellon University/Letter13
William Bardel, Luminant Design
This course is about collaborative processes and engaging tools that you can use to become a better visual communicator in creative brainstorming or problem solving. During this course we will investigate the development of sketches, doodles, and handwritten notes that are the first expressions of great ideas and the road maps of how to get there. We will help you visualize their potential as we discuss and learn a few of the ways to capture, organize and share them with others.
Variations of this course have been offered at CHI2007, Emergence 2007, DUX 2005 and in numerous professional contexts. The primary methods taught in this course parallel those taught in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon.
Our focus for this course will be on narrative sketching, storyboarding, and visual notation for interaction design. In this course, you will be generating piles of drawings and learn methods that will help you to continue to build competency after CHI.
Participants need no prerequisite knowledge of the subject, but must exhibit interest and a desire to incorporate hand sketching into their design processes. This course is for both novice and seasoned professionals/academics, introducing both basic themes and new approaches to sketching and notation. Openness to discussion, full course attendance and having fun is mandatory.
The format for this course will be a balanced combination of lecture and hands-on sketching and prototyping. At the end you will have a broader understanding of how to use sketching in ways that may enable you to work more creatively.
Mark Baskinger holds an appointment as an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Design. He has published papers on product language and methodologies of visualization, has conducted visualization courses in numerous conference and business contexts, and holds multiple patents for products in the home. Mark is the author of “Pencils Before Pixels” written for the March/April 2008 issue of interactions. For more information see: www.design.cmu.edu or www.letterthirteen.com
William Bardel is an information designer who focuses on making complex ideas and environments accessible and understandable. In his work at design, architecture and software companies, he has designed navigational signage systems for cities, transit maps, annual reports, diagrams, dynamic information displays, websites and statistical data visualizations. His writing on visual cognition was included as a chapter in the book "Mind Hacks", by the O'Reilly Press (2004). His infographic and diagram work was featured in "Best Informational Diagrams II" by, PIE Books in Japan (2004). Currently, he serves as the president of Luminant Design, an information design consultancy. For more information see: www.luminantdesign.com