Preparing for a meeting about the value of prototyping to understand business and customer needs, I re-discovered a movie my son made back in 2012. He then was almost 9. He never was, and still is not known for is drawing capabilities. What I like about this example is how crude, yet beautifully effective it is. Yes, that is a Star Wars X-fighter flying away.
I remember when he created it. During the summer break, he was sitting most of the mornings at the dinner table, drawing. In my memory almost every morning. I do not remember how long. Eventually he surfaced with this movie. It was the beginning of a long sequence of stop motion movies, throughout his school years, mainly with lego figures.
Often, when I ask colleagues, or – when I was still teaching at the university – students to illustrate their ideas, I received some push-back. “I cannot draw” I remember a member of a talent pool claiming, after just having completed best in class a master in Fashion Design. We seem to be worried that it must look nice, acceptably beautiful. When they get over their hesitation, the illustrations always enlighten, clarify. They support the discussion, which may touch on many topics but never on the quality of the illustrations. The purpose of drawing is not to have a nice picture, but to explain and illustrate ideas.
And especially at the beginning of a project it serves to have rough ‘napkin’ sketches. The more polished drawings are, the more comments are limited to color choices and mistakes in pixel alignment. “Are you sure that blue is according to the Brand guidelines?” Instead, when show a simple sketch, they cannot wait to grab the pencil from your hands to improve on your idea. I always smile and hand-over the pencil. Mission accomplished 🙂