Mark Baskinger, an associate professor in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses the importance of Interaction Designers learning to draw better in order to better communicate ideas. With Interaction Designers coming from many different backgrounds to the relatively new field, it is rare that they have been classically trained in sketching like their counterparts in Industrial Design. Mark also talks about the advancement of Interaction Design as a discipline and how through confidence in purpose, Interaction Designers can build report in the business world.

An oldie, but goodie, Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, speaks at Stanford’s Human-Computer Interaction Seminar on topics discussed in his book Sketching User Experiences. A little more lengthy than his recent talk at Mix ’09, Bill goes into greater detail about the importance of sketching in design. He also provides examples of how sketching can be applied to the design process in a meaningful way.

Bill Buxton Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences, takes the first 30 minutes of the MIX ’09 keynote. One of my favoUrite speakers, Bill talks about the importance and power of sketching user experiences. Citing many examples, Bill stresses the importance of experience design in a bad economy and thinking about the transitions between states and not simply the states themselves.

These things are far too important to take seriously.
- Bill Buxton