Economy of Movement
Martial Arts legend, Bruce Lee, stated that “The successful warrior is an average man with laser-like focus.” Sketchable is deliberately designed to provide creatives with that focus through an economy of movement unique to sketching applications. Every facet of Sketchable’s UI is meant to keep the user focused on their work, making creation less cumbersome and more engaging. From Sketchable’s floating color picker, stroke preview, and spring-loaded tools to assigning tools to touch and the intentional integration of Microsoft’s Speed Dial, Sketchable is the main weapon of the successful creative warrior.
The floating color picker is easily assigned to any part of the canvas through a simple click and drag, allowing for quick, subtle changes in tone. When combined with the stroke preview feature, changing a tool’s opacity and size with only two motions, creativity is not hindered by multiple menus.
When adventuring beyond the simple brush and palette approach, users will find a surfeit of options and tools. Multiple view filters, paper textures, drawing overlays, and simple canvas manipulation might be awkward to access were it not for Sketchable’s thoughtful design and features like spring-loaded tools. Tools like the hand, rotate, and zoom are “spring-loaded” and will snap back to the previously used painting tool after a single use. Features like these provide users the opportunity to utilize its vast library of features and then quickly return to their work rather than muddle through menus.
If one tool is not enough and multiple tools are needed concurrently to complete a task, Sketchable provides the option to assign different tools to one’s finger, stylus tip, and eraser. Users can paint and blur or quickly sketch with an eraser at the ready. Having one or multiple tools easily accessible offers the user with customizable experience that can change from project to project.
Microsoft’s Surface Dial provides another level of efficiency for the Sketchable user. With Sketchable’s 3.0 update, users can manipulate brush settings, canvas positions, brush settings, and the undo/redo state all with one hand on the Surface Dial. This original innovation from Silicon Benders is called the Speed Dial, a more intuitive UI for the Surface Dial that reduces the number of actions between the user and their vision.
Sketchable’s focus on economy of movement removes the most massive of creative blocks–distraction. Designed from its foundation to keep the creative’s attention laser-focused on their project and not on menu searches, Sketchable is a necessity in any artistic arsenal.
