Sketchnoting, if seen as a methodology, exhibits potential for systematic and methodical
research. It provides a framework to communicate visually through simple shapes,
breaking complex forms down into combinations of dots, lines, squares, triangles, and
circles. Situated at the lower end of the visualization spectrum, which ranges from napkin
style sketching to photo-realistic rendering, it has low barriers to putting pen on paper.
In the context of an industrial design graduate course originally introduced as a gateway
to traditional visualization in design, sketchnoting exhibited greater potential to not only
lower the threshold of sketching, but in addition, to foster creative, and in some cases,
even boost design confidence. These anecdotal observations revealed several overarching
opportunities for a larger, cross-disciplinary research, which would begin with exploring
the ability to foster creative confidence through lowering the inhibition threshold to
drawing for designers and non-designers alike. Proceeding to explore the potential of
sketchnoting (due to its dual coding nature) becoming an entry point to employing all
modes of thought processing, deductive, inductive and abductive logic as they pertain to
divergent and convergent thinking. Ideally setting up this framework to be investigated as
a means to improve student engagement and general learning behaviors. The long-term
and underlying goal is to change how people see and solve problems and to diversify
stakeholders involved in the development processes. This paper discusses the underlying
concept as well as the originally observations, closing with the above-mentioned series of
research opportunities.