Web designers, grab your pens!

Don’t know how to draw stuff? Lacking in confidence about your drawing skills? Then you are perfectly qualified!

I’m not joking at all. You don’t even have to draw a straight line. The only things you need is plenty of paper and a pen. Leave your sketching fear behind, grab your “guns” and start drawing.

The point in sketching a web project before touching a computer is not to choose colors and figure out how your design will look like. The point is to put down and organize your ideas. Decide how you will layout things. See the flow and hierarchy of the elements you will use. Be in your visitors position and explore your website. Refine the interaction.

This is the step where you will rearrange or discard things you don’t like and establish new things that will improve your project. Try to draw as many sketches as you can. Don’t correct a drawing. Make a new, improved one. Use fat pens and don’t go deep into details. These are not useful at the moment.

Try to share your drawings with friends and partners. Show them your “scenarios” and collaborate. The one and only thing you will achieve is improvisation. Nothing less. Take notes of their comments and start sketching again. The more you sketch a project before touching a computer, the more refined and improved your end result will be.

Always remember that sketching and wire-framing is a key step of the design process. It will not only affect your project but it will also help you understand it better. In many cases just by drawing a project, will make you decide to chuck it up.