When talking about UI design, we always think of skeleton screens, wireframes, and mockups. It’s a multi-step process, starting from the idea to building a complete design. An important step that many designers skip is sketching. Before starting with the design process, one should sketch and doodle using pens and papers. Sketching UI has many pros:
1. Making your idea clear
Sketching UI makes your idea clear. You may have a great idea in your mind. However, sketching it forces you to think more of it. You have to dive more into details. The idea might be foggy at first. When you draw your UI, element by element, you’ll pay attention to a lot of details. And by the end, you’ll have a complete and clear idea that you are going to design.
2. Exploring possibilities
Exploring possibilities by sketching is easy and fast. Since sketching is much faster than designing on software, you can try different ideas quickly. While sketching, do multiple sketches of the same UI. In each one, try different layouts and structures. Maybe different elements too, like switching between drop downs and radio buttons, or switching between toggles and checkboxes. Look for what suits you more. What’s more clear, and makes the user experience better. After doing multiple sketches, you’ve explored many possibilities. Then you can start to eliminate the ones you didn’t like until you have the final sketch.
3. Saving time
You may think sketching is time-wasting. But actually, it saves you time when designing. Sketching should be quick. It shouldn’t be perfect, nor near to it. Just make sure your sketches are clear enough for you to understand. If you sketch right, you’ll reach the design part with a clear idea of what you’re going to make. Instead of starting from scratch, and start playing with different elements, you start building what you sketched. You don’t have to think about every element. Also, you won’t make a lot of changes because you already tried all the possibilities. Sketching before designing allows you to focus more on the design itself. So instead of trying different layouts and structures, you focus on UI colors, paddings, fonts, etc…
