When I was a mathematician, my preferred tools were a hard-bound notebook, a rollerball pen, and a box of crayons. I drew tons of pictures to help myself make sense of my ideas, and when I needed one for a document, I'd spend some time and draw it up in Adobe Illustrator or write a program in a TEX macro package to draw it. I've written other entries about why as-plain-as-possible text files are preferable to formatted documents in a system like Microsoft Word or Open Office, and the same applies to drawings, except that in this case, it involves not using a computer at all.
A piece of paper or pieces of paper, fed into a fax machine and then received via j2 (or eFax or another similar service) or scanned with a multifunction machine and converted to a convenient format (i.e., PDF), are more time-effective than a drawing tool like Visio or even OmniGraffle. It takes a few minutes to sketch out what's needed, drop it in a sheet feeder, and then collect the results for use as an email attachment or for cut-and-paste. (At least on the Mac, Preview supports cut-and-paste to other applications as native PDF.) For a related take, see Paper Prototyping Graphics, although the idea of using stickers seems like a step back toward unnecessary frills to me.
In the form of a “do the simplest thing” corollary: If you need to draw a picture, use a pen. If you need to draw a pretty picture, use an app.
Comment from William Grosso @ 2006-06-20T16:41:41Z # permalink
Comment from Paul Brown @ 2006-06-20T18:34:23Z # permalink