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WHAT MOTIVATES AND DISCOURAGES DESIGNERS TO USE DIGITAL SKETCHING? COMPARING ITS USE TO EXTERNALISE IDEAS VERSUS COMMUNICATING WITH EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2021

Charlie Ranscombe*
Affiliation:
Swinburne University of Technology;
Wenwen Zhang
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury
*
Ranscombe, Charlie, Swinburne University of Technology Architectural and Industrial Design Australia, cranscombe@swin.edu.au

Abstract

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Digital design tools have dominated engineering and design practice offering many advantages that ultimately improve efficiency in the design process. Digital sketching is one such example of these tools yet, its current use is primarily to present work to stakeholders (External Communication). It is relatively underused to externalise ideas (Externalisation) where sketching on paper is still favoured. This paper aims to understand the characteristics of digital sketching that motivate or discourage designers to use the tool. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 12 designers to gain insights on the tool's use in External Communication and Externalisation. Results highlight a trade-off between fidelity of visualisations and time and effort expended to achieve visualisations. The key difference between the use scenarios is the way in which this trade-off is connected to managing stakeholder involvement. While designers acknowledge advantages that digital sketching can offer in externalisation, it is viewed as requiring a level of detail to begin use. In conclusion we suggest segmenting roles of digital sketching in terms of the characteristics identified in this study would help to motivate use in Externalisation.

Type
Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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