SKETCHPAD VERSUS TABLET
Could tool technology choice—pen and paper or stylus and tablet—affect a design’s quantity, quality, and understandability?
Written by Nancy Kristof
Four sketches from the researchers’ dataset. Sketches done in pen on paper were viewed to be just as effective as those done on a digital tablet. Image: Madhurima Das
ENGINEERING RELIES ON FACTS and objectivity, but it’s not immune to subjectivity. Can a better understanding of how perceptions may be influenced during the process lead to better final design outcomes?
That’s among the questions researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Mechanical Engineering set out to answer by looking specifically at tools used for sketching.
Sketches are important tools often used to communicate early concept designs. With the increased use of tablets and styluses to create sketches, the team wanted to better understand how the quantity, quality, and understandability differed between the use of a tablet and stylus versus pen on paper. Their findings were recently published in the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design.
“We’re looking at the design process,” said Madhurima Das, lead author of the paper and now a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. The research points to data that found 70 to 80 percent of design life cycle costs are set in the preliminary stage of design. Other goals include understanding if there are gender differences in performance between different tools and how accessibility to digital drawing technologies impacts design performance and perception.
“It feels very exciting,” Das said of new technologies. “But we don’t always necessarily know what the impact is of integrating some of these technologies into our workflows.”
The research involved 18 men and 22 women who were asked to generate concepts by sketching ideas for two engineering design prompts: one with pen on paper and one with a stylus on a tablet. The first challenge was to design a tool that could quickly froth milk and the second was to create a low-cost, easy-to-manufacture peanut shelling machine.
“If you have a really high-quality sketch, other people might perceive it as being more creative, regardless of what the idea is.”
—Madhurima Das, lecturer at the University of Melbourne
The team set the study up to “isolate just what’s happening as a result of the tool,” understanding different users have varying experience and comfort levels, Das explained.
Results showed no statistical difference in the number of sketches produced on paper versus the tablet. Earlier research already established that the quantity metric was an important factor in achieving better final design outcomes.
“Having a much larger quantity of sketches early means you have a better likelihood of having good ideas within that set,” Das said.
Quality was evaluated using criteria that included line smoothness and accurate proportions. Surprisingly, pen and paper sketches won out. Expectations that the tablet’s built-in ability to help engineers draw perfectly proportioned, shaped, and smooth lines did not translate to better perceived quality. This can influence how people think about the design as a finished product, versus a concept that invites feedback, Das said.
LINE SMOOTHNESS
Analyzing drawings to determine their quality relies on several metrics, the first being line smoothness. Using the Wilcoxon rank sum test to assess sketch quality scores for each tool, pen and paper sketches had a mean smoothness score of 3.12 and tablet sketches had a score of 2.82.
PROPORTION/ACCURACY
The second key metric is a sketch’s proportion/accuracy, which, when combined with line smoothness, create a measure of overall sketch quality. Pen and paper sketches had a mean proportion/accuracy score of 3.55, while tablet sketches had a score of 3.21.
UNDERSTANDABILITY
Finally, understandability is the effectiveness of a sketch as a communication tool and its ability to convey a concept. Ultimately, sketch quality, smoothness, and proportion/accuracy were all higher for pen and paper drawings compared to those on a tablet.
“If you have a really high-quality sketch, other people might perceive it as being more creative, regardless of what the idea is,” so it depends on what you’re going for, Das noted. “Having one really nice drawing is nice, but it’s not that effective as a strategy for ideas.”
Though quality is certainly important, it’s not something engineers should worry about when it comes to sketching, Das said. More important is understandability, a metric that hadn’t received enough attention in previous research. The research evaluated understandability by comparing sketches to a separate written description of the concept to see how closely they matched.
Das used the game Pictionary to explain. “You have a specific goal. It’s not to make a beautiful drawing, it’s to make sure that other people understand what it is that you’re drawing,” she said. “Those are the two things that are really important: quantity of sketches and whether or not it’s an effective communication tool. And those are the ones where they perform at the same level.”
The study showed no differences in sketch quantity, quality, and understandability between genders nor by the tool used. This kind of process research is important as technology evolves. It may help designers better understand which tools offer the most value as the design is developed, such as AI at concept generation or selection, or VR for prototyping, Das said.
“I see it as a matrix of so many different tools, especially digital tools that are changing all the time. There are research questions at the intersection of every one of those cells with matrix,” she added.
This area of research is about going beyond objectivity and asking what it means to do better design. “As engineers, everything that we're creating and putting out into the world has an impact on people. It’s actually a very social endeavor,” Das said.
Nancy Kristof is a technology writer in Denver.
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