Does Sketching Skill Relate to Good Design?

Sketching is an activity that takes place throughout the engineering design process, and is often linked to design cognition. This preliminary study identifies different skills that contribute to a designer’s sketching ability and explores how those skills might be related to sketch fluency and design outcome. A positive correlation was found between the quantity of sketches produced and sketch skills that emphasize drawing facility, but a negative correlation was found between sketch quantity and a skill related to mechanism visualization. Sketching is sometimes considered a generic skill, but this study suggests that there are differences among the different types of sketching skills in the context of engineering design. No notable relationship was found between sketching ability and design outcome. Results also suggest that students provided with explicit instruction in sketching tended to draw more overall, although there are likely many other factors involved. INTRODUCTION Sketching is an activity that takes place throughout the engineering design process. Sketches are used to capture and communicate ideas generated during design [1, 2], and have been closely linked with design thinking [3]. But to what extent does sketching activity actually reflect design thinking? What are the factors that lead designers to use sketches in the design process? In this paper, we consider an often ignored aspect of conceptual design sketching: the designer’s sketching ability. How is this ability linked to the design process, and what is its association with sketch fluency and design outcome? Does someone who can draw well also draw more while engaged in the engineering design process? Does better sketching also mean better design? This preliminary study looks at sketching ability as assessed through sketch tasks that emphasize different aspects of drawing in the design process, including drawing facility, mechanical recall, and visualization of new objects. Issues explored include whether these different skills are independent of each other, whether they are correlated with the amount of sketching performed during the design process and whether they are linked to the quality of the final design product. The role of sketch instruction in engineering design education is also explored. Does the teaching of sketching skills correlate with better design? Many engineering undergraduates in the United States are provided with instruction in drafting and CAD, but it is less common to teach sketching. Understanding the role of sketching in design, and the factors that affect it, would provide insights for better design education and better interpretation of observable design activity in our quest to understand the cognitive processes during design thinking.