Isolated & Referenced Elements
January 12th, 2009
This is an interesting sketching technique provided to me by Jonas Löwgren, which separates individual interface elements from the page. Here, individual elements are taken out from the page view and then referenced back to a mini version of the page which contains a structural representation. More so, the page structure only lives in one area (the centre). Nearby each sketched element there is also some faded hinting of what is around the element. Taken together, this increases the speed in which the sketches can be generated, as there is less need to redraw full pages with all other elements.
Secondly, this technique also has the strength to emphasize particular elements as they speak back at us with a louder voice. The isolation of various items, freed from the page view makes them stand out more. There are also other submitted samples (here and here), which also made use of this technique in a wireframe context.
Credits: Jonas Löwgren
January 15th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Its funny as I tend to do this when I do my initial sketches and then tie them all together in the more traditional wireframe documents using Visio later on.
After reading this I may try keeping that style going next time in Visio.
I've only just found your blog and so far the content has been excellent.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:42 am
[...] we were exposed to quite a bit of mind mapping exercises which in a way resemble the interface sketches of Jonas Löwgren. Then again, this sample also shares the high level characteristics of a user journey submitted by [...]
May 26th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
[...] Isolated & Referenced Elements [...]
June 9th, 2009 at 10:22 am
[...] Isolated & Referenced Elements [...]