Investigating the effect of sketch quality on the shared understanding of design dyads

Abstract While a significant amount of research has documented the importance of design artefacts in design communication, relatively little work has investigated the effect of design artefact quality on the development of a shared understanding between designers. In the current work we focus specifically on sketch quality and the effect of sketch quality on the shared understanding of design dyads. A controlled study with 22 design dyads (44 designers) was conducted to understand the relationship between sketch quality and shared understanding. Results suggest that design artefact quality, measured by sketch understandability, does not predict the shared understanding of a design concept. Our findings hold implications for the fundamental ways in which we evaluate sketch quality and the importance of artefact fidelity for communicative acts.