“A sketch should have ‘just enough’ fidelity for the current stage in argument building.”

In our “Prototyping User Experiences” class we are reading Buxton’s Sketching User Experience.  In chapter 9, “The Anatomy of Sketching” Buxton argues that sketching is core to design because it is core how we converse with ideas.  His list of what a sketch should be is instructive.

A sketch is quick, timely, inexpensive, disposable, suggestive, plentiful - with a clear vocabulary, distinct gestures, minimal detail, an appropriate degree of refinement, and a certain degree of ambiguity.

To sum this up, Buxton quotes Hugh Dubberly, “A sketch should have 'just enough’ fidelity for the current stage in argument building.”

Does this remind anyone of Ries’ minimal viable product?  Can we think of MVP as a sketch of a business model?  Shouldn’t our MVP be quick, timely, inexpensive, disposable, suggestive and all that?

Abstracting this a bit - perhaps we sketch with ourselves, we prototype with our team, we talk to our customers in order to have conversations, so that our conversations can move us forward.