On a blank piece of paper, divide your mind into ten small sections and draw the outline of the same concept, leaving out all buttons, seams, textures, and structural components. Sketch quickly on this silhouette, just a minute or two for each, even if the result looks sloppy, which is fine. This approach is more effective than a precise drawing because it helps you explore various proportions and compositions before you become locked into a single design.
Often, spending time refining the edge of a design, shading the surface, or checking the perspective makes it harder to change the overall composition. A less experienced designer might then stick to an early version with an unaddressed grip, aperture, base, or form because it’s a waste of time to discard it. The ten small thumbnail drawings are useful because each drawing is easy to replace.
Alter one major feature with the first few silhouettes. If designing a desktop lamp, adjust the relationship of the base, arm, and head. If designing a storage container, compare tall, wide, tapered, and stackable forms. If designing a hand-held item, change the size and location of the handle. By varying a single design decision and leaving other features as they were, it will be easier to compare the options.
Create a series of sketches that reflect the context of use, the object’s placement, the space around it, and the areas the hand needs to access. A wide base can increase stability, but it can take up too much of the space on a shelf. A small profile can make better use of limited space, but it can make the opening more difficult to access. A round shape might seem pleasant, but there can still be too little space for fingers. With so many silhouettes to see, any of these issues will become apparent.
After finishing the ten silhouettes, do not pick the most pleasing shape immediately. Highlight the versions that are most promising for the function, proportion, balance, and context of use. Next, pick the best parts of each. One may have a better handle design, another a better base, and a third a cleaner form. A new design can then incorporate ideas from all three. Instead of considering the first drawing to be the final version, you should look at these as separate parts of a concept that can be combined.
Once you have identified two or three of the most interesting shapes, draw them again at front, side, and top views to determine their form from various perspectives. This review often shows how the first silhouette hides a detail. A shape that looks good from the front may look too thin from the side. A wide opening that seems to fit a hand from the side view can turn out to be too tight from the front. Sometimes it is helpful to make a full-scale drawing to check whether the proportions are reasonable before making a full-size paper template.
It is not the number ten that is important; rather, the act of making ten sketches allows you to distance yourself from your very first idea. Once there are several viable directions on your page, it no longer feels like the first one is doomed, but merely an opportunity for comparison. Instead of looking for the sketch that has all the right answers, look for the one that poses the most interesting question for you to test.