Five Design-sheets ─ Creative Design and Sketching for Computing and Visualisation

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. 

Jonathan C. Roberts is in the field of computer visualization, human computer interaction and computing pedagogy and a Professor in the School of Computer Science, Bangor University, UK. He has extensive experience in teaching computer graphics and data visualization to both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Christopher J. Headleand is in the field of virtual environments, computational ethics, and human-computer interaction in the School of Computer Science, at the University of Lincoln. He is also an experienced entrepreneur and has formed successful startups in the web, and virtual reality sectors.