Embodied Sketching

Embodied sketching is a participatory design method in which participants and designers physically act out interaction ideas with their bodies, props, and the surrounding space rather than only sketching them on paper or screen. It surfaces movement, social, and sensory qualities of an experience that paper prototypes miss, and is widely used when designing for play, sport, exercise, and rehabilitation. Accessibility researchers value embodied sketching because it foregrounds the diversity of bodies and movement patterns at the design stage, instead of treating bodily variation as an edge case to handle later.