Aarron Walter

As the UX lead at MailChimp, I draw a lot of interface ideas, and so do the folks in my team. Sometimes we make detailed drawings of a new feature, or just a rough sketch of an idea to share with a developer or executive.

There are a lot of nice sketchbook options on the market, but nothing really fit our workflow. My colleague Stephen Martin knows a bit about how to make a good sketchbook, and together we have a lot of ideas about how we’d like a UX sketchbook to work. So guess what, we made our own. It’s called The UX Sketchbook.

Here’s what I like about this sketchbook. Each page has a one-up browser window with a grid on one side, and a two-up on the back. When you are at the beginning of an idea, you work through lots of concepts quickly. That’s when you want to use the two-up side. Jot notes in the margins, and even write in the URL in the browser to denote location in the site you’re designing. More refined ideas can stretch out on the one-up side, which also saves room for your notes and annotations in the margins. The perforation of each page makes it easy to tear out a sketch and share with a colleague, or post it to a sketchboard when you are collaborating. The spiral binding keeps it flat on your desk no matter what page you’ve flipped to, and the debossing on the cover adds an extra touch of elegance.

Starting Monday May 16, you can buy these lovely little UX design tools at http://uxsketchbook.com. If iOS design is your bag, you might want to check out Stephen’s iPhone and iPad sketchbooks too, which are popular with industry experts like Josh Clark.

These sketchbooks are simple, and are designed to make you work faster and smarter. We hope you enjoy them in your design practice as much as we do.

buy the UX Sketchbook