This book describes a structured sketching methodology to help you create alternative design
ideas and sketch them on paper. The Five Design-Sheet method acts as a check-list of tasks to
help you think through the problem create new ideas and to reflect upon the suitability of
each idea. To complement the FdS method we present practical sketching techniques discuss
problem solving consider professional and ethical issues of designing interfaces and work
through many examples. Five Design-Sheets: Creative Design and Sketching for Computing and
Visualization is useful for designers of computer interfaces or researchers needing to explore
alternative solutions in any field. It is written for anyone who is studying on a computing
course and needs to design a computing-interface or create a well-structured design chapter for
their dissertation for example. We do acknowledge that throughout this book we focus on the
creation of interactive software tools and use the case study of building data-visualization
tools. We have however tried to keep the techniques general enough such that it is beneficial
for a wide range of people with different challenges and different situations and for
different applications.
