UX Glossary · S
Sketching
Drawing ideas quickly and roughly, to think through many options before committing to any.
Sketching is fast, low-fidelity drawing used to generate and compare ideas. Bill Buxton’s Sketching User Experiences (2007) makes the case that sketches are not early versions of a design but a distinct activity with a different purpose: exploring the space rather than refining a point in it.
Why roughness is the feature
An obviously unfinished drawing invites disagreement. A polished one invites approval, or comments about the colour. People critique what they see, and a rough sketch keeps the critique on the idea.
It is also fast enough to be disposable, which is what allows quantity. Fifteen sketches in an hour produces genuinely different directions; one careful wireframe in an hour produces a first idea, defended.
Sketching and wireframing
A wireframe is a specification of structure, usually singular and intended to be built on. A sketch is one of many and mostly intended to be thrown away. The distinction matters because treating a first sketch as a wireframe skips the exploration entirely.
Drawing ability is irrelevant
Boxes, lines and stick figures suffice. The value is in the thinking, and the most common barrier is self-consciousness rather than skill.
In practice
The “Crazy 8s” exercise, eight ideas in eight minutes, is deliberately too fast to allow polish, and it reliably produces at least one direction nobody would have reached carefully.