Page 89 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

2. “Pixel Perfect”: Designers as Craftsmen 77
Picture 2.5 Working on the structure and illustrations of the Customer Journey
Here, a designer highlights the importance of keeping “our feet on the ground” through making something “physical”. Similarly, in the following example of making Pensiopoly, this is illustrated. In the fragment of field- notes below, it is explained how designers use paper-based sketches to get a sense of possible design directions:
They [Carrie and Jane] placed several A3’s on the table in front of them. On each paper, a part of the game was sketched. “The mechanics”, Car- rie said when pointing to the drawings. The drawings were made with pen and paper, and included a lot of details. Nadia looked at the drawings, and then said to Carrie and Jane that she was ‘impressed’ with how quickly they translated the idea of Pensiopoly into a visual draft. ‘I am excited’, she said. She continued: ‘Yesterday this idea was in the air, now we have a sketch of the game that we can digitize in the upcoming days.’
When working on Pensiopoly, the designers did not only make draw- ings to generate ideas but also to make collective decisions, for example about “what steps are included in the game”, a designer said.