Sketchnoting

Sketchnoting is a form of visual notetaking, combining sketches and annotations to produce stylised notes that can aid in information retention, revision of your notes as well as generally improved notetaking skills. Sketchnoting was developed by designer Michael Rohde in response to him finding conventional notetaking didn’t provide him with sufficient detail to express his ideas¹. Rohde found that the combination of text-based notes and accompanying ‘doodles’ allowed him to capture more information on a topic and enabled him to more thoroughly engage with topics. This notion of ‘engagement’ is fundamental to effective notetaking, as effective notes enable us to record key pieces of information that can then be revised and help us to make better sense of information.

Sketchnotes can be used to aid in your day-to-day studies, for example when recording notes on a lecture, tutorial, workshop, academic paper or book chapter, as well more design-specific practices such as capturing a design process, plan, visualisation, concept or idea. You might use sketchnotes to communicate a concept to a design team too, as their underlying value is in their ability to capture a lot more detailed information when compared to purely textual notes.

The combination of image and text within sketchnotes allows for implicit or tacit information to be recorded directly within your notes, which affords your notes more context and richer detail.

A key misconception about sketchnoting is you must be great at sketching to take great sketchnotes, which is quite untrue! The process of sketchnoting tends to help designers actually exercise and refine their sketching ability, but you do not need to possess any particular sketching ability to produce sketchnotes. As with generalised notetaking and sketching, everyone will develop their own style and this is encouraged – but do keep in mind that your sketchnotes should be relatively legible and self-explanatory, like a mind-map but with more detail!

Sketchnoting uses a visual language that includes but is not limited to: text, emphasis text, basic shapes, containers, connectors, icons and symbols, sketches and illustrations, shading and colours. We’ll go into further detail about these different elements in the following activity, but the key takeaway to remember about sketchnoting is that it’s an accessible, practical and simple method that can help you to produce more useful notes.

Activity

Before you start

While sketchnoting might seem quite time consuming, especially if you don’t regularly practice sketching, this is another common misconception. Through regular practice, you’ll begin to develop a style of sketchnoting that allows you to capture ideas visually that might be difficult or time consuming to express solely through text. In our experience, sketchnoting is especially useful when used in place of conventional notetaking to record notes on lectures and academic readings.

We’ve found that lectures and readings specific to interaction design tend to express both theoretical concepts and well as their implications for design practice. It is the relationship and connections between interaction design theories and practices that can be some of the most important information and at times, difficult to capture with written notes. The following activity suggests a basic outline of how you might approach sketchnoting a lecture or reading.

Activity steps

1. In place of a contents page in your sketchbook, write down 15-20 common words or phrases you envision you’ll use often in your note taking. Some examples based on our experience include:
   • Idea, process, user/s, technology, prototype, website, app, iteration, team, theory, practice, framework, toolkit, sketch, team and development.
2. Assign a unique, recognisable icon or pictogram to each of these words/phrases in your list. By following this process you’re creating a kind of visual library and reference tool that can be implemented throughout your sketchnotes, saving you both time and improving your ability to recall important pieces of information when both recording and reviewing your notes.
3. Start sketchnoting! Use varying colours, line weights, icons, pictograms, arrows to create hierarchy, organisation and structure. Draw on your visual library of icons and over time, refine this list. You might notice some words are used often, while others very little or not at all. Develop this library and make changes as relevant, adding and removing items as necessary.
4. Review your sketchnotes and focus on what is and isn’t working for you. The key to effective sketchnoting is to be persistent and critical about your process, while ensuring that the most important information is easily identifiable and memorable. Consider adding emphasis to the key finding, theory, principle or process described in the lecture or reading you sketchnoted.

References

1. Rohde, Mike. 2012. The Sketchnote Handbook:  The Illustrated Guide to Visual Note Taking. 1st edition. Peachpit Press. QUT Library Permalink.