Investigating the Feasibility of Digitally Created Industrial Design Sketchbooks

While externalising their thoughts and giving design ideas a physical form, industrial designers make use of various kinds of media, such as drawing on paper, constructing in foam or card, generating computerbased 2D and 3D representations, and so on. The creation of such ‘models’ or ‘representations’ of developmental design ideas fulfils two fundamental roles: to aid communication (mostly to other people) and to aid designing (mostly for the individual designer) (Wormald, 1997). To document their design processes, it is usual for designers to compile a physical (i.e. paper-based) sketchbook of design activity. A comprehensive sketchbook is recognised as a portfolio collating all the materials that a designer generates, collects, is inspired by, consults, researches, observes, reads etc. during the progression of a design project from the very beginning to the delivery of final outcomes. Such use of paper-based notebooks and sketchbooks is well documented across creative practices (Tabard et al., 2008; Brereton, 2009).