For quickly getting a visual concept across to someone, a pen and paper is hard to beat. The lack of the ability to quickly sketch out ideas and give them to someone electronically (without messing around with either a scanner or Photoshop), is a huge drawback when you’re thrashing out issues with a design and need to share your thoughts with a distributed team.
But, you know, this is 2010, right? And touchscreen devices with gestural interfaces are everywhere, so what are my options?
Simply: iPad plus the Adobe Ideas app. Ideas is a digital sketchbook, which allows you to sketch on a blank page or, more usefully, import photos and annotate them using your finger or a stylus. Combine this with screen capture on the iPad (home button + power button, if you didn’t know) and you have the ability to rapidly sketch out problems, suggestions and notes on your design.
Sharing your marked up screen shot is simple – you email from the app in pdf form. Of course, Ideas comes with blank page sketching so you can create wireframes, models and anything else in there too.
It’s also a great tool for photographers and art directors. For example, it allows you to easily mark a photograph with areas that need cloning out:
It’s this kind of functionality that makes the iPad such an endearing device. Once you’ve seen the ease with which you can both consume and create ideas using it, you realise how unacceptable the user experience with most devices is – and that it’s time for a new paradigm.
Thanks to Phill Howson for suggesting I write this post.
