Sketching User Experiences

📖 Why You Should Read It

Sketching User Experiences challenges the belief that design is about polishing interfaces and instead focuses on ideation, exploration, and communication. Bill Buxton makes the case that sketching is not about art but about thinking through ideas, surfacing assumptions, and inviting collaboration. For design leaders, this book is a call to build a culture where early-stage exploration is visible, iterative, and valued—not hidden until it’s too late to change course. Plus, Bill Buxton comes with practical experience of design at scale in large organizations.

👉🏻 Key Takeaways

• The design process benefits from quantity over premature quality in early concept phases.
• Good design teams don't just make one idea work—they explore many to find the best one.
• Design is not linear; it requires iteration, feedback, and a visible decision-making process.
• Sketching is about communication, not presentation; it invites discussion rather than defends a solution.

• A sketch that is never seen might as well have never existed. Visibility drives collaboration.
• Management must be exposed to options early—not just polished concepts late in the game.
• Design and usability are complementary: design finds the best idea, usability refines it.
• Tools matter less than thinking styles; sketching can be physical, digital, or hybrid.
• Designers must advocate for environments that support exploration and risk-taking.

💬 Favorite Quotes

"If someone made a sketch and nobody saw it... did it have an impact?"

"You don’t make a decision on whom to marry based on first impressions. So why would you do so with a design concept?"

"Without appropriate design, yesterday’s success is tomorrow’s straitjacket."

"The role of design is to find the best design. The role of usability engineering is to help make that design the best."

"The value of sketching is in the thinking, exploring, and communicating—not the artifact itself."