Sketching tips for building engagement and workshop facilitation

Have you ever wished that you could learn faster? or be more persuasive in the workshops that you lead?

There’s a surprisingly simple way to do this – visuals. A new visual meetings movement is fuelling creativity, productivity and knowledge exchange. You can use images to build team engagement and commitment. Let me share with you a few guidelines and experiences that might create new business opportunities for you and stimulate innovation in unexpected directions.

Grab a pencil or a marker, a blank sheet of paper and start exploring the power of visuals.

Left-brain, right brain?

Before we turn our hands to doodling and strategic illustration, let’s have a look at how our human brains work. You are probably familiar with the (sometimes controversial) idea that our two sides of the brain control two different manners of thinking. The left-brain focuses on logical thinking, analysis, and accuracy. The right-brain on aesthetics, intuition, feelings and creativity.

Most of us have a clear preference for one of these styles of thinking. However various EEG (electroencephalograph) studies have shown that some of the greatest thinkers, philosophers and inventors use both sides of the brain together in unison.  According to Daniel Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind”, the era of left-brain dominance is fading. The advent of the information age is giving way to new cognitive patterns, where creative abilities decide who gets ahead and who falls behind.

If you’re curious about which side of the brain is more dominant for you, I encourage you to take this short interactive quiz to find out (I was pleased with my whole-brain score – 50% for left-brain and 50% for right-brain).

Visual learning

Do you remember the most recent presentation you attended? What was it about? What do you truly remember about it? The U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) conducted research into learning and information retention, concluding that

“Approximately 83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses – 11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch.“

According to the same study

“three days after an event, people retain 10% of what they heard from an oral presentation, 35% from a visual presentation, and 65% from a (combined) visual and oral presentation.”

Pictures of a business process or strategy help illuminate the choices we have and help teams plan the best route to achieve the best results. Pictures can simplify and clarify complex topics; they engage imagination, streamline communication and make the evaluation of business scenarios quicker and easier to digest.

Multicultural environments

Most of my recent projects took place in Qatar. Due to the diversity of the local population, the participants of my workshop often held different nationalities, came from various backgrounds and had mixed language skills.

Pictures break down language barriers. It’s extremely important to have a common understanding of the key ideas, directions and actions that need to be taken. I noticed that people are much more engaged when they can move away from their discomfort with the language and not getting the meaning right. In evolutionary terms, our hominid ancestors were using imagery to communicate long before the ability to converse developed. So it’s no surprise that this kind of communication is hardwired into our capacity to think on a level that language might not reach!

Group engagement

I am a big fan of the idea sharing platform TED. As a local TEDx organiser (TEDxWarsaw), I believe that building engagement in our communities, knowledge exchange and catalysing ideas are key components of organising each event.

Years ago we started employing a technique named graphic recording – a translation of each talk into images and text on large sheets of paper drawn in real time at the event. During breaks in between sessions, drawings were displayed in the foyer where attendees had the chance to discuss each of the shared ideas. Seeing a recording of a talk stimulated networking, commenting and generating new ideas on top of the ideas shared by the speakers.

If discussing a drawing can be so engaging, imagine the impact of co-creating it. I like to get my workshop participants interacting with the visuals. Getting up and down also generates some energy from all the movement, making the entire session feel less static. Whether sticking a sticky note with an idea or Dot voting for their favourite mobile app feature, users are more engaged when they get to co-create the visual outcome of the meeting.

A couple of years ago I came across Innovation games (Innovation Games – The Collaboration Frameworks that Power the Continuo Collaboration Cloud) – a set of twelve games that help uncover your customer’s needs and desires. My favourite one is called “Speed boat”. In this game you draw a boat on a whiteboard and several anchors holding it back. The boat is your system, and the features that your customers don’t like are its anchors. Customers write what they don’t like on an anchor. Having a boat picture as a metaphor of their situation really resonates with the users. I was surprised how much easier it became for my workshop attendees to identify  obstacles and challenges when they could put them on anchors.

Let’s draw

Remembering more, being more engaged, streamlining communication – that all sounds really great in theory, right? But what to draw and how to do it?

What to draw?

The short answer is… everything! Here are some ideas of what you can draw during meetings:

  • Meeting purpose posters (pre-drawn before the meeting, helps focusing on the main topic of the discussion)
  • Agendas
  • Roadmaps with milestones
  • SWOT analysis
  • Pros & cons lists
  • Organisation diagrams
  • Brainstorming frameworks with clusters for different types of ideas (these can be added later on on sticky notes)
  • To-do-lists

The Grove Consultants International came up with the Group Graphics Keyboard, a framework that organises all graphics into seven archetypal processes.  The picture below gives you an overview of this concept, but if you want to find out more, I would point you toward the book “Visual Meetings” by David Sibbet.

Basic pictures

I find it very helpful to have my selection of top 20 basic pictures in my ‘back pocket’ ready to use and draw whenever needed. Among them are pictographs (pictures of real things) and ideographs (pictures of ideas). Practise basic shapes on a piece of paper. You can google simple doodles and start by copying the shapes you like.

Here is part of my selection, but of course you might need a different set depending on your activity:

Returning to the research findings from the US Dept of Labour, combining pictures with words will strengthen the focus on meaning.

Lines and arrows

Lines can connect or divide. Dashed lines are weaker, double lines stronger. While arrows often indicate an action or a transition, hollow arrows are great for depicting projects or processes.

Frames

Adding a frame is a simple way of grouping elements and focusing content. It’s also great for highlighting key parts of your drawing.  

Colour

Dark colours are easier to read, lighter colours are good for highlights. Use colours to organise your information and make your picture easier to memorise. During workshops I tend to use black, green and red markers, as well as light blue or yellow for highlights around pictures, frames and titles.

I can’t do it

I know the feeling. If your everyday job consists of business or technical tasks, it’s probable that you might not be used to drawing. I’ve been there. I was terrified when I had to sketch something in front of clients or teammates. I graduated in Computer Science and Telecoms. Drawing wasn’t really a skill expected in my university assignments. But after attending a couple of workshops that utilised visual recording, I was amazed by the difference it makes to combine analytical and visual aspects.

This fascination took me on a journey that did not end with simply sketching for fun. While I started out as a programmer, this understanding and appreciation of visual representation led me toward designing interfaces and layouts for applications and websites – the same sort that I used to be coding! I truly believe that a deep  understanding of both of these elements leads one to a holistically intuitive end product.

My current activities mainly consist of designing platforms/interfaces, usability and user experience research and workshop facilitation. I am convinced that drawing and sketching are skills that you can acquire by practice – it’s not about talent or abilities that you have to be born with. All it takes is time and dedication.  

So what to do if you have no experience? What if you would like to use the power of visuals, but you feel stuck?

Use sticky notes

I’m addicted to sticky notes. They are an essential part of the brainstorming and requirement gathering sessions that I organise. Make use of the various sizes, shapes and colours. I use colour coding for different types of information. Sticky notes are amazing for rearranging, prioritising and clustering information. You can get different shapes as well – speech bubbles, hearts, thumbs, arrows etc. One of my favourite types of sticky notes are smiley faces from Herlitz. I give them to workshop participants to select their favourite features. They are also great for usability tests, to quickly give an overall grade. Even the most shy participants are happy to choose and stick a smiley face, even if they find sharing verbal feedback difficult

Try pre-drawn templates

The are many great pre-drawn visuals that you can use for your meetings. Although nowadays I usually draw my own templates, I am a big fan of the selection available from Grove Tools- Visual Planning & Templates – Grove Tools, Inc.

Some other great templates I find really useful:

Practice

It is said that practice makes perfect. I have some good news – your drawings don’t have to be perfect to be effective. With some training, you can quite easily gain the skills sufficient to visually enhance your workshops.

There are some great resources to help you get started. As a bookworm I find comfort in good reading resources – if you have more time, I recommend “Visual Meetings” by David Sibbet and “The Back of the Napkin” by  Dan Roam (for a problem-solving approach). If you just want the essentials and a fast track sketching tutorial, check out “Sketch Thinking” by Jose Berengueres.

There are also many great online courses – check the drawing and sketching offering from Udemy – I’m sure you’ll find a lot of inspiring tutorials.

Last but not least, if you still don’t feel ready to draw yourself, but you would like to take advantage of the power of visuals, consider inviting an external visual facilitator to your meetings.

A picture is worth a thousand words…

Using visuals during meetings and workshops is an extremely powerful tool, but do remember that your images need to be clear and understandable. The goal is to clarify information, focus attention and build engagement. Not to embellish interiors. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I am convinced that with a little bit of practice, you’ll make them count.

 


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If you would like to find out more about my sketching experiences, workshop facilitation or UX and UI projects, don’t hesitate to contact me.