Drawing Product Ideas

Explore straightforward drawing skills to help you communicate product ideas exponentially faster than you could with text

In Drawing Product Ideas: Fast and Easy UX Drawing for Anyone, RSA Fellow and Google Data Visualization Lead, Kent Eisenhuth delivers a new and exciting guide to effectively communicating product ideas by drawing just two simple things: boxes and lines! In the book, you'll learn why drawing is important and how it supports the design thinking process. You'll also discover how to build your drawing toolkit by exploring your own personal drawing style.

The author also includes:

• Strategies for how to use your drawing to support your solutions to real-world problems
• Tips and tricks for applying your new drawing skills in a workshop setting, in real-time
• An illuminating foreword by the celebrated Manuel Lima, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts

An essential volume for engineers, researchers, and product managers, Drawing Product Ideas is also an indispensable blueprint for anyone seeking to improve their public, ad-hoc drawing skills.

Foreword ix

Preface xi

Introduction xv

Chapter 1 Why Draw? 1

Explore an Idea 2

Gain a Shared Understanding 5

Improve Collaboration 7

Anyone Can Draw 7

Right Time and Place 10

Chapter 2 Reframing Our Thinking 15

Breaking It Down 17

Introducing the System 19

Common Drawings 23

Chapter 3 Lines and Points 33

Telling Stories with Lines 34

Making Meaning with Points 42

Tools and Materials 45

Chapter 4 Building From Rectangles 47

Creating Diagrams 48

Content Elements 55

Navigation Elements 58

Forms 65

Chapter 5 Building From Circles, Triangles, and More 81

Circular Elements 81

Triangular Elements 89

Advanced Icons and Symbols 92

Representing Interactions 98

Chapter 6 Illustrating Light, Motion, and Other Concepts 103

Shading Techniques 103

Using Accent Marks 105

Looking at Lighting 105

Using Elevation 110

Using Texture 116

Capturing Motion 119

Conveying Luminance 120

Communicating Sound 121

Chapter 7 The System 127

Putting It Together 128

Creating Something New 134

Chapter 8 Using Flows To Tell Stories 139

Starting with the Syntax 139

Showing Interactions 142

Just Enough Information 144

Depicting Transitions 145

Labels and Annotations 147

Being Conscious of Composition 150

Chapter 9 Telling Engaging Stories 157

Real-World

Constraints 160

Invoking Emotion 166

Adapting the Visual Language 170

Wayfinding and Landmarks 174

Choreography and Timing 178

Packaging Your Drawings 180

Chapter 10 Moving Forward 183

Works Cited 185

Index 187

Kent Eisenhuth is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Kent has developed visual languages that improve collaboration, comprehension, and decision-making across a wide array of Google products including Fitbit, Google Cloud, and Alphabet's Loon. Kent leads Google's Data Accessibility program. He previously led Google Cloud's Data Visualization Program and coauthored the data visualization specs for Material Design. Kent's work and ideas have appeared in many publications, including The Guardian, UXmatters, ACM journals, and Smashing Magazine. Kent has presented talks and ideas at many conferences, such as IxDA's Interaction, SXSW, and the Israeli Visualization Conference, and he is a frequent guest lecturer at several universities in the United States.

Discover simple drawing skills you'll use to communicate product ideas quickly and easily

"At the center of the Venn Diagram that contains Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks, Buckminster Fuller's drawings, and Google UX, there sits Kent Eisenhuth. Like Leo and Bucky, Kent knows that drawing is the secret sauce to defying experience complexity and driving user change. In this incredibly useful book, Kent teaches you how to make drawings that make a difference."
—Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin and Draw to Win

"This book is a great reminder for any problem solver that starting with drawings can help us clarify key concepts, they allow us to iterate quickly, and they provide an alternative way to communicate ideas which promotes inclusion."
—Jen Kozenski Devins, Director of Accessibility UX, Google

"Everyone can't draw. But everyone can think. Eisenhuth's book starts from the non-artistic, functional thinking part of your brain to get your digital product or service business idea right. And he then walks you through how to take that vision and communicate it to all the stakeholders you'll need to convince, guide, and lead to victory."
—John Maeda, 16th President of RISD and author of The Laws of Simplicity

In Drawing Product Ideas: Fast and Easy UX Drawing for Anyone, RSA Fellow and Google Data Visualization Lead, Kent Eisenhuth, delivers a fresh and practical roadmap to the rich communication of product ideas by drawing just two easy things: boxes and lines. The author discusses strategies for using drawing to support your solutions to real-world problems and tips and tricks for applying your new drawing skills in real-time and in a workshop setting. He taps into the growing intersection of the design thinking and user experience disciplines to reveal an actionable 'how-to guide' to quick, easy, and effective visual communication.