Sketching and Conceptions of Software Design

In this paper, we describe a study of sketching and design within a software organization in which hundreds of hours of video of development activity in situ were captured and analyzed. We use the study as a basis from which to question how researcher conceptions of software design -- what it is, when and where it occurs, and how it is accounted -- affect the way in which design is empirically studied. When researcher conceptions of design substantially differ from the actual design practices of those who are studied, researchers are at risk of seeing only what they are looking for and in this way miss the very design practices carried out by software developers in their quotidian work that the researchers were hoping to characterize.