Who is holding the pen? Annotating collaborative processes

Sketchnoting is a form of visual notetaking that we use to communicate and unpack our design research work in collaborative settings. However, the more we rely on these sketches we find that while they provide clarity, they can also obscure participants’ voices. In order to explore this, we constructed a technique to allow us to look more closely at our own sketchnotes in order to reflect and develop more detailed understandings of what they might reveal and obscure. In this paper, we use this technique to inquire into the multiple voices held in two sketchnotes from past projects. The result is a re-interpretation of these sketchnotes that bring to the foreground multiple and detailed narratives about the distinct voices within them. We propose this technique as a way to consider the knowledge generated through sketchnoting in greater depth, which allows us to better frame our own sketching practices in design research.