Live Sketchnoting Across Platforms: Exploring the Potential and Limitations of Analogue and Digital Tools

Sketchnote Components, Design Space Dimensions, and Strategies for Effective Visual Note Taking

“…Mahyar et al [35] characterized analog note taking strategies used during collaborative visual analytics tasks, leading to a number of suggestions for digital tools supporting in particular these forms of note taking (e.g., hybrid notes, easy transitions from private to shared notes, and facilitating management of notes). Other strategies include contextual interviews, artefact analysis of digital note taking devices, and online surveys [11], diary studies of sketches in everyday use [43], or observational studies [20].…”

“…With our motivation of better understanding sketching practices of sketchnoting in particular, and to identify what to adapt or improve upon for the digital (akin to [1,2,11,43]), our study provides a structured analysis of a large corpus of created sketchnotes, going beyond the more targeted and constrained analog vs. digital sketchnoting study [20]. Different to Ayobi et al 's study [2], where the comments of online posts were used to determine context, we decided to complement our analysis of the sketchnote corpus with interviewing experienced sketchnoters, giving us an opportunity to follow up on issues identified in the first part of the analysis and help us understand reasons and motivation.…”

“…With the goal of creating such sketched artefacts -sketchnotes but also other note taking -with expressive digital tools, past research investigated the design of novel software techniques for digital inking [23,53] and new sketching hardware, for example enhanced digital pens [15,24,27]. Studies of sketching and note taking practices [20,43,54] play a critical role in informing the design of these tools. Insights from these studies can lead to concrete suggestions on how analog techniques translate to and can be extended for digital inking, such as results from Riche et al's study indicating benefits of supporting both drafting and crafting, or unifying heterogeneity across inking tools [43].…”

“…For sketchnoting in particular, a number of blogs [5,52] and books [9,45] promote the practice and teach drawing techniques, most of these rooted in a very active emerging community of sketchnoters sharing both artefacts and techniques online. And a recent study investigated the nuanced differences between analog and digital inking with sketchnotes [20]. However, the problem is we are missing a systematic analysis of sketchnote practice and an overview of the wider spectrum of the choices made while creating sketchnotes, which together could lead to further targeted implications of how to enrich digital tools to support creative expression for sketchnoting in particular, and digital sketching more generally.…”

Style Blink: Exploring Digital Inking of Structured Information via Handcrafted Styling as a First-Class Object

“…As studied in many other contexts [10,36], pride-in-craftsmanship of the custom, self-created artefact increases perceived value for sharing and display -and can similarly apply to the digital, such as with curated collections in the cloud [37]. Such attention to detail in crafting visual artefacts is at the core of many modern notetaking practices, such as sketchnoting [16] and bullet journaling [6].…”