“Long dismissed as a waste of time, doodling is getting new respect,” or so say researchers quoted in a July 29 article in the Wall Street Journal. Those experts include two CSE co-authors behind a 2011 study that lent credibility to the pro-doodling argument. CSE Research Scientist and Lecturer Nadir Weibel (at right with UbiSketch componenets) is quoted by the newspaper as saying that the opportunity to doodle "changed the way people expressed their feelings." “Their pictures communicated more than just a text or a regular photo,” added Weibel. “They were more personal, more intimate."

Former CSE Ph.D. student-turned-software developer Lisa Cowan, who led the study, felt that many of the doodlers were expressing complex emotions “that they wouldn’t have shared via written posts or texts.” Indeed, Cowan and her co-authors of the original study explored the use of doodling and sketching as a powerful new tool for communicating through social media. Cowan, Weibel, current Ph.D. student Laura Pina, CSE Prof. Bill Griswold and CogSci/CSE Prof. Jim Hollan developed a system called UbiSketch – short for “ubiquitous real-time sketch-based communication system” – that combined the familiarity of doodling on paper, but with the completed doodle easily exportable to Facebook or Twitter. The notebook paper had a pattern of dots, so when an Anoto digital pen is used to draw on the paper, the system tracks the pattern against the dots and sends the doodle via Bluetooth to the phone. From there, it can be uploaded automatically to the social network of choice. The researchers even integrated a flap of paper with buttons on the notebook which the pen can tap to indicate which social medium to use. Among the conclusions of a paper presented at a conference on human-computer interaction, the researchers found that “ubiquitous sketching broadened and deepened social interactions.” More than twice as many comments, likes and friend requests were triggered by sketches compared to photos.  In the exploratory field study, the UC San Diego researchers provided detailed examples of how doodling and social media enhanced communication. As reported in the Journal, the father of a newborn baby “drew a frazzled-looking brain (at left)  to convey a feeling of being overwhelmed,” while a grad student drew a “towering obelisk looming over a childlike figure, to convey the pressure she felt over a deadline for a paper.”

According to Wall Street Journal writer Sue Shellenbarger, “recent research in neuroscience, psychology and design shows that doodling can help people stay focused, grasp new concepts and retain information.” Clearly, computer science should be added to the list of disciplines where science is documenting the value of doodling in the broader context of social media. Although the rapid development of sketching capabilities on today’s smartphones has the potential to overcome the need to use paper in the loop, there is still no evidence of wide doodling or sketching on social media. According to CSE’s Weibel, the affordances of paper and the more direct interaction that this enables still make this medium often more suitable for rapid, informal and more natural communication. Weibel is continuing this research and he is currently exploring how paper-based sketching can be used to overcome the generational gap and support new communication capabilities between older adults who are used to pen and paper, and younger generations used to online social media.

Read the complete article in the Wall Street Journal. 
Access more information on UbiSketch. 
Watch a video of UbiSketch in action. 
Read the full conference paper on “Ubiquitous Sketching for Social Media.”