Sketching for collaborative ideation
Today we explored visual thinking and sketching for collaboration based on a session I developed with Aileen Wilson, Professor at Pratt Institute in New York.
We practiced sketching as a thinking practice and a collaboration tool. I aimed to provide you with some strategies on how to share ideas quickly and visually, and make you feel more confident about your sketching ability. (Remember you already know unconsciously many of the symbols and strategies; or you knew them as a child and you can retrieve them).
The rules today were: Sketch first, Think after; Show, Don’t Tell! and Don’t Judge, Sketch!
Why sketch?
- Explore ideas quickly and in groups
- Inhabit the liminal space of an idea
- Generate more ideas
- Document and keep a trace
Warm-up and exploring different functions of sketching: We started with 3 short activities to stretch your sketching muscles, build your confidence and a repertoire of figures and forms. They also illustrated three functions of sketching:
- Sketching as “memory” — documentation- review this at the end of the three activities
2. Sketching as “mapping” — activities over time
3. Sketching as an ‘ideational’ process- zooming in, creating detailed information
Collaborative sketching and visual thinking:
We then worked on a short challenge to re-imagine the space under the BQW with a focus on safety and community. Teams were tasked to ideate and collaborate through sketching.
Each team came up with very different ideas using different sketching, collaboration and communication strategies.
Sketching strategies: icons, bird eye view, perspective, indicating direction with arrows, color, mix media, mapping, zoom in.
Collaboration strategies: parallel work that is integrated towards the end, or ongoing collaboration. Standing (physical environment) is creating more energy, more transparency and facilitating collaboration. A lot of examples where several people were sketching together. Or one adding one thing saying “no: I mean like this”.
Silent critiques as a way to see and to hear feedback
The rule (inspired by some form of critiques in art and design schools) was for the team “presenting” to not talk. Their sketches (and title) were there to speak for them. The second rule: no assessment or judgment of the idea. The question was simply: what do you see?
- Teams were probably stressed to not be able to “present” and let the work talk for them… Yet overall everyone understood the main point of the idea. Someone also noticed that others saw things that was inspiring and could be added in the future.
- The point was not what the team did but what we as a group we interpreted: this turned into an exercise of collaborative thinking where the rest of the class thought together to make sense of the sketches, in turn providing the “presenting” team for direction to work (clarification; addition and exploration of new ideas).
Thee key learnings (that we will explore further in a few weeks);
- Giving feedback does not mean criticize; it means making sense, providing one perspective and making suggestion. Because there was only the sketches we were forced to engage in constructive feedback.
- Receiving feedback means listening and not defending an idea. As teams had to be silent, they could only listen fully and did not have to think about how to justify their choices (remember our discussion about the different types of listening in our first class…).
- Show, don’t tell: The power of articulating an idea and letting go if it to see how people understand them. Sometime we can be surprised by an interpretation, which then triggered another idea.
