Miro Method Mix: Storytelling, Stickers, and 2D Modeling

Combining Lego Serious Play and Theory U’s 3D Modeling to test a new online workshop concept

Intro

I recently tested a new Workshop method with other community members at Mischief Makers — an Amsterdam-based Facilitation Agency. In a quick & dirty 20-minute session, I guided 7 participants through an online workshop combining Zoom and Miro. The session enabled participants to think creatively, model a current point in their career, and reflect on it in pairs. The nature of the event was to lend space to practitioners who want to try out new concepts and get constructive feedback from peers who also work in the Facilitation space. In this blog post, I’ll first break down the method I prototyped and then break down what I learned from applying it. Finally, I’ll share the feedback this method received to help other Facilitators on their journey.

Session Design & Purpose

Title: Reflecting on your communities of practice as a Workshop Facilitator.

Description: We will use my twist of social innovation methods and Lego Serious Play. Visual Modelling in social innovation is commonly used to uncover hidden dynamics in systems to identify leverage points for change in the trajectory of individuals and groups.

Goal: Create an abstract view of your professional journey or a current challenge to gain insight from multiple perspectives (your peers) into some of the systemic factors causing it.

Agenda:

1. Introduction & Warmup (5 minutes)
2. Overview of the board, the exercise, and rules (3 minutes)
3. Building activity (10 minutes)
4. Sharing in pairs, in breakout rooms (5minutes)
5. (Did not have time for) Building a second model of an emerging future

Before starting the workshop I prepared the Miro board so we could immediately begin. This meant setting up a system placeholder (circle) and a toolbox for all participants — as can be seen in the next image. You can see the bird’s eye view of the whole miro board at the bottom of this article.

1) First each participant picks an Icon from the triangle to introduce themselves. Then stand up in front of the camera and try to emulate its expression with your hands, body or face [Consider that the latter might be a more “personal/vulnerable” expression for many people] - 2) Each participant has a system with boundries and a toolbox with building blocks - 3) Rules & Instructions

Inspired by Lego Serious Play

In recent months I encountered Lego Serious Play more and more often at events and on my LinkedIn feed. So much so, that I decided to include building with Lego in a workshop that I ran with an Amsterdam-based Movement Studio. Based on different models, we evaluated and prioritized challenges they faced with community engagement, with their theoretical teachings, and with their business structure. I’ll probably write a post about this very workshop next…

Feeling the impact of this in-person Lego workshop and getting positive feedback on its clarifying effects from the participants inspired me to do more. I was curious if this was also possible online. With that being said, the next image shows the Toolbox each participant had at hand. The idea is that this toolbox represents a selection of Lego pieces — even though it is quite obvious that From an atomic design system perspective one might say that there are mainly Organisms and Molecules present, and hardly any Atoms. However, this may also depend on how a participants divergent thinking interprets and combines the elements. When telling a story on the basis of a visual model, a light bulb for instance could be seen as one of the million pieces that the sun is made of and therefore becomes an atom in the context of this set of symbols.

The toolbox contains various symbols that I chose from Miro’s sticker and icon inventory. My selection process was intuitive to use symbols that may easily be interpreted as having multiple meanings and therefore lending themselves well to imagination and storytelling. This is also why I tried to include symbols from different categories such as nature, basic shapes, work and home, people, and random contexts that caught my eye. This is a subjective and biased selection process that rightfully did not meet every participant's needs. In the future, it would be great to systemize it in a way that appeals to a given target group with certainty.

Leaning on Theory U’s 3D Modelling

In my master’s honors program called Young Innovators, I was introduced to Theory U. Since then, I practiced methods such as 3D Modelling and 4D Modelling (an embodied version) in several community-building contexts. The first instance was with my Fitness Community in 2021 and later that year I briefly joined U-lab 2x to reflect with other innovators on our education system. All that to say, this workshop concept and the agenda were not a shot in the dark but are built on multiple prior experiences facilitating this method…

3D Modelling is a physical process that brings multiple perspectives to understanding how a situation or system might evolve. Participants create a sculpture that represents their current situation and the emerging possibilities of their work and life. The process prompts questions from four vantage points, allowing for 360-degree seeing and sensing of an emerging future. — u-school.org

This quote has several implications for this adapted 2D Modelling method — especially in considering getting it “production ready”.

Firstly, with work and life being inseparable people can connect to their purpose or their interests. This should be supported by the symbol choice in the toolbox. Secondly, it is crucial to explore emerging possibilities by creating a second model that was not included in this iteration. Thirdly, the responsibilities of the Facilitator extend to prompting participants in various ways and introducing the least amount of bias with their wording of questions. In their resources page, u-school includes a variety of prompts that from standing the test of time could be seen as heuristics in the field of social innovation. But how do they translate to other contexts?…

Reflections —” Future Work”

• I wanted to use the 20 minutes to complete a whole mini-workshop. Therefore, I set the priority to test this concept more so in horizontal depth rather than vertically. Meaning, that I did not dive into detail with any of the activities, be it the embodied introduction, the building session, or the sharing in breakout rooms. The result is that the time allocated for each part could definitely be longer, except for the building activity.
• For some participants, the threshold of starting to build their story is very high. It could be interesting to share an example story in the beginning, to make that easier. However, that would introduce a huge bias compared to the blank slate participants could do anything with. Before building a model in Lego Serious Play participants are often prompted to build something small with two pieces of Lego. Let’s say a duck. This is a super quick and simple way for participants to experience their creativity at play by thinking outside the box with limited pieces. The question is, how exactly can this be done in Miro?.

Learnings — What to keep and what to change

• The icons should be changed to be more universally interpretable. This will likely take a few more iterations of testing different icon sets on different participants.
• Use music during the building phase. However, be mindful of the type of music since music can amplify certain energies.
• Keep the building time quick. This resonates with my facilitation experience using the design dash. Time pressure gets people into the flow, given the task is clear and simple enough to execute!
• Speaking of simplicity: A template for everyone to get started right away was well received. In addition
• More time to share. This is where the magic happens and more perspectives are introduced. Merely building or imagining a construct and keeping it in the mind is not enough. It must be expressed and echo back from the walls of an active listener at least, and at most be met with questions deepening the story and testing its foundations.
• Speaking of listeners: It was suggested that before one person shares their model with another, this other listener is provided with prompts from the facilitator. The goal is to help them either ask certain questions or reflect on their model. Overall this also has the potential to increase the attention both sides give to the exchange.
• The Miro board needs more directions, in terms of where to “build” to make the building phase that requires so much concentration in the Zoom meeting bulletproof.

Further Readings

As I described above, in my mind I’d retrace this method idea as being inspired by my facilitation of Lego Serious Play and 3D Modeling.

Read more about both methods in my previous blog post:

Workshops for Creativity, Teambuilding and Problem Solving

Miro Board: Bird’s eye view

This is what the complete board looked like after the session. I had initially prepared for 16 participants, just in case.

Are you a Facilitator or want to become one?

Firstly, I recommend you just start facilitating and leading groups. Get started, like a kid would with Legos. It could be in any context you like. Facilitation skills are soft-skills and highly transferrable. There are also several courses out there to guide you on your learning trajectory.

Check out Facilitation courses from companies I trust:

Mischief Makers: Trainings

Facilitator School: Masterclass

U-School: 3D Modelling

Questions, Ideas, Feedback?: Comment below or swoop by on LinkedIn.