International audienceExisting design processes typically begin with informal ideation by sketching out a basic approach that can be further developed into a more complete design. Although intuitively simple, and seemingly informal, the sketching process is actually a structured activity that strongly influences the design of the system; hence, it has an important role in the design success. In this work, we develop a well defined specification of the sketching activity. We consider sketching as a process of achieving agreement, based on stakeholders communicating ideas about a design and its properties, with the side-effect of incrementally developing a (set of) common language(s) specific to the idea domain. Our perspective on sketching further differs from more common notions of ideation by noting the roles of requirements and system properties, and offering a general perspective on sketching as a modular activity within design. We validate our approach by analyzing the sketches of a research group at the CAMPaM 2019 workshop. By recognizing sketching as a fundamental activity in design, we enhance the formalization of the design process, and suggest improvements to the tool support for sketching beyond the basic drawing features
