Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design

Buxton's argument is deceptively simple: sketching is thinking, not drawing. A sketch is disposable, ambiguous, fast — the opposite of a specification. The book demonstrates that the earliest phases of design require tools that encourage exploration and tolerate vagueness, and that reaching for high-fidelity prototypes too early kills alternatives before they can be evaluated. Buxton spent decades at Xerox PARC, SGI, Alias, and Microsoft Research, and he was one of the invisible architects behind multi-touch and the Microsoft Surface. The practical implication for product teams is that the gap between "we need a wireframe" and "we need to think" is where most design value is created and most organizations fail. This is the best single book on why the front end of the design process matters more than the back end.