I have been enjoying Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton. This is a great book, filled with tons of visual goodies and great writing. He brings a lot of other ideas and disciplines into the fray, and it’s very encouraging.
One example: he observes that you really do want someone with illustration talent around, to help visualize your design ideas. However, he freely admits that he’s not very good at this. He writes:
“…One of the things that gave me great encouragement took place in New York City in 1997. My wife and I were going through a retrospective exhibition of one of my heroes, Robert Rauschenberg, at the Guggenheim Museum. About three-quarters of the way through the exhibit, I had an epiphany: There was nothing at all in the exhibition that suggested that Rauschenberg could draw!”
Interesting. I can’t draw either, but I do love design. To fill in those gaps in education, I’ve been thinking about getting a book, or taking a class, to get better at it myself.
At any rate, he sums it up well with this quote:
“The limiting factor is your imagination, not technology or technique. There is always a way to express an idea appropriately within your means.”