Mindful Mockups

Scarcely a week passes without some new UX software popping up on Product Hunt, with a feature-set or workflow promising to shorten the distance from idea to prototype.

So recently I had some reservations when I challenged myself to spending a month using nothing but my Apple Pencil and Paper (the app) for my all of my conceptual mockup work.

Three months later, I’ve mostly stuck with it and along the way I’ve been re-discovering something interesting about the product design process that I had lost for some time:

Being more present in the experience of solving a design problem.

Those of us who’ve spent years mastering the soft-tools of our trade are unaware just how easily we switch into autopilot. When we do that, our relationship with our work changes. Somehow, in the flurry of key-stroke combinations, clicks, copying, pasting, styling and refining we lose the mindful connection with the very problem we’re hoping to solve.

Cyclical sketching.

I hadn’t ever considered just how different the experience of articulating an idea could be, by making the process more meditative. I borrowed a couple of tricks and methods from Headspace (a great mindful meditation app I wholeheartedly recommend) and began implementing them into my sketching process — I call it cyclical sketching

Cyclical Sketching is drawing the same screen or flow over and over again from scratch for a specific period of time; I typically do 5–10 minutes. The number of iterations do not matter, nor does solving the problem. The idea and aim is simply to engage fully with a problem for a set amount of time. When you false start or get stuck, you start again.

All you need is a well defined problem. You can use a User Story, a Job to be Done. I prefer the platter rephrased as a question. Here’s an example:

When Im signing up how can I spend as little time possible filling out a form, so that I can get started?

I start with the modal screen here, get some ideas down get stuck and start again. New modal. Slightly longer. Maybe tabbed? Nope, tabs are shit. Start again. Why a modal? try another direction…

With every cycle I’m forging paths in my mind. It’s slow and deliberate. Which is why I’m almost always itching to jump in front of the computer to get the job done.

Being immersed in the problem is the aim. Not the number of ideas or artefacts produced.

But Why?

I’ve found that when i’m drawing an interface element for the 12th consecutive time I’m asking a different set of questions about it. When I’m faced with the permanence of a pen stroke (even virtual strokes) my decision process is palpably different. The repetitive, time-boxed structure creates a space

Using Paper on The iPad has been helpful on two fronts: multiple iterations within a single canvas (fewer crumpled papers) and an artefact that can be shared and consumed easily.

At the end of a session I find myself with less to show. But what is lacking in breadth of artefacts is compensated by the depth of thought represented in the artefact.

Slower mockups are helping me relearn that problems are best solved with an engaged mind, not necessarily a busy one.