Visualisation of ideas and emergent designs is an essential ingredient in design practice. Sketching and CAD represent two widely used visualisation tools, each with complementary affordances that dictate their typical use during the design process. Sketching has affordances of fast and fluent visualisation whereas CAD affords easy modification of detailed designs. This paper proposes a hybrid tool, Digital Sketch Modelling, investigating the extent to which it can deliver complementary affordances of both sketching to CAD. Analysis of diary entries made by 62 postgraduate designers using sketching, digital sketch modelling and CAD within a design project forms the basis of the study. Results illustrate how digital sketching over crude 3d digital models, combined with benefits of digital image editing software enhance affordance for easy visualisation of ideas. Concurrently, the level of software used in Digital Sketch modelling led to fewer concerns over the level of difficulty to modify designs, enhancing the affordance for easy modification. As such we conclude Digital Sketch Modelling does combine affordances indicating its potential benefit in use between sketching and CAD.

The prospect of autonomous vehicles and associated technologies has disrupted traditional modes of vehicle operation and ownership. This requires automotive designers to shift their focus from designing vehicle form to consider the design of transport experiences. As such, there is a need to explore how best to support automotive designers in communicating user experiences (UX) alongside the physical design of vehicles. This paper presents an industry case study conducted with Ford Design Asia Pacific to assess the embodiment of UX in early concepts. Attributes of generalised model for UX are mapped to designers' storyboard illustration for the experience of an advanced concept for an autonomous vehicle interior. Results show how a mix of captions, sketches of users and contextual features illustrate different attributes of user experience. From findings we conclude firstly, the need to develop a toolkit to help designers communicate descriptions of as yet designed interactions. We also conclude that sketching contextual features of experience can provide a starting point to develop aspects of UX that can be used to differentiate and identify the Ford brand.

An engaging user experience is an increasingly important design characteristic in the automotive industry. Compared with physical design characteristics (form, material, mechanical design, appearance), automotive designers find UX (user experience) challenging to communicate during the early stages of the design process without investing in expensive prototypes and/or models. This paper presents the development of a method to explore strategies to communicate UX through the medium of storyboards early in the design process. The method enables links to be drawn between the design tool of storyboarding and the attributes of theoretical UX outlined in theoretical frameworks. By applying this method in a case study of a storyboard created by Ford Design Asia Pacific, we identify how the theoretical attributes of UX are manifested, and we also highlight certain attributes of UX that are difficult to convey during the early phases of automotive design. This research thus contributes a method relevant to practice that assists with effectively communicating UX in early-stage automotive design where higher fidelity prototyping is unviable. Additionally, it enables the study of storyboard outcomes in the design process to assess the degree to which the intended UX is communicated. In doing so, it contributes a first step toward formalizing the analysis of UX in concept design, which in turn opens up this highly subjective area to further research in the automated analysis of conceptual design and even generative design.