Speed Sketching with Designers: User Inspired Brainstorming

This paper describes a method called speed sketching, which utilizes user data as inspiration in a brainstorm-like session. The user data comes from a design probe study of an entrance to a building. One challenge with usercentered design is to give life to user data in the design process. A design workshop was held with five designers as participators. During the workshop speed sketching was used and evaluated through analysis of the sketches, a semi-structured questionnaire and discussions with the designers. The findings of the study show that the user data consisting of dream and horror stories of entrances provided input that could be used in a creative manner. Merely illustrating the stories as such seems to give less creative results than using the stories as a more general source of inspiration. Based on the study performed here speed sketching seems to be an effective and creative way to merge data from user studies with the design process. Using sketching as a quick and expressive means of interpreting a story created by a user of a design object provides designers with a systematic tool to creatively use material from a design probe study..