Designer's Sketchbook Vision

Imagine a system that would allow you to rapidly sketch out new ideas, wherever you are. This tool would provide all of the affordances that a traditional sketching system would have (a canvas to sketch, sketching tools of various types). In addition, this new sketching system would provide capabilities that are difficult to find in a pencil and paper sketching system, such as ease in organizing and managing the large amounts of sketches that designers produce on a day to day basis with the projects they work on.

This system could be customized for the needs of each designer. For instance, as a user interface designer, I could tell the system that I am designing user interfaces, and it would structure the sketching system in a way that would make sense for me. In this case it would manage my sketches on two dimensions, one dimension being the fidelity of the sketch (which can be seen in most design domains), the other which allows me to see how all of these sketches fit together. For instance, if I am sketching a user interface, I may want to specify how this user interface interacts with another user interface.

This system would be as quick to use as a traditional pencil and paper sketching system, even though it is in fact a computer system of sorts. In addition, there will be minimal interaction needed with non-sketching aspects of the system. The system would be designed for sketching and sketching related tasks only. As a result, the system will not be as bloated and have as much complexity as traditional workstations that are used for design.

This is my preliminary vision of what this designer's sketchbook project would look like. I would appreciate to hear peoples comments and feedback with the vision of what this project would entail.