Image credit: Daylight Design
The trouble with being a User Experience specialist is the amount of wall space you need. In an ideal world, you’d set up a war room for each project, where all your materials can stay permanently stuck on the walls. Most of the time, that’s not possible – other people in your company need to use the meeting rooms too! This is where the need for portable wall space comes in. Here are some suggestions:
Foam board (aka Foamcore)
- Sheets of white cardboard with polystyrene sandwiched in the middle. Normally used by artists to mount photos, etc.
- Strengths: light, but rigid. Reusable. Check out this neat ikea-hack by Daylight (pictured above) if you need a stand for your boards.
- Weaknesses: not cheap but stationary shops may have slightly damaged items at a reduced price. (A small dent in the corner makes a mounting board useless for mounting art, but it’s still great as a portable wall surface for your needs.)
Butcher paper (aka Kraft paper)
- Huge rolls of thick paper (traditionally used by butchers to wrap meat).
- When you get kicked out of the meeting room, you roll up your paper and take it with you. It’s easy enough to unroll and stick to another wall – provided you have the space!
- Strengths: it’s damn cheap
- Weaknesses: heavy, so needs strong anchoring to the wall using tape or loads of blutack. This can ruin painted walls.
Pattern cutting paper
- It comes on a huge roll, like butcher paper, but with a dotted grid marked on it. (Recommended by Paul Thurston of Think Public)
- Strengths: Cheap, and the grid is helpful for sketching UIs
- Weaknesses: It’s heavy, like butcher paper.
3M “Self-Stick Wall Pads”
- I’ve never used these, but they are basically giant, flip-chart sized post-it notes.
- Strengths: no messing around with blutack / etc
- Weaknesses: surprisingly expensive.
So, what do you use for portable wall space? Suggestions in the comments, please!
