Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook

3.9 Photo Traces

create collections of sketch outlines that form the basis of composed sketches

In Chapter 3.8, we showed you how you can trace technologies – such as a cell phone – and use that as a template to frame your interface. However, you can use traces more generally to capture any real-world entity, and then use (and re-use) that as part of your sketches. This includes objects such as tables where we do our work, people doing different activities or in different poses, postures of hands, and even a physical environment such as a room. The idea is simple: take a good photo; trace over that photo to create a photo trace, save that trace as a sketch element, then copy and use that sketch element in your sketches. This is a powerful method, ...