Creating a visual explanation step by step
Real life case study with a detailed description of the process
Visual thinking is becoming an increasingly popular tool for so many practical applications today. And IT domain is not any exception: use of the method ranges from traditional diagrams that explain structure or functioning of the system to colourful coaching posters that raise people awareness about certain behaviour.
One issue is common though for those that practice the method — what is the easiest and quickest way to get from your inner idea to the physical realization of it? There are plenty of frameworks that help with the issue and I have created my own (and I will explain this framework in more detail in my next article), but I know from my personal experience that the best way to learn something is to go through a particular example.
Hence this article. Recently I was creating a poster and I thought that this example would be a great opportunity to illustrate the thinking process behind any type of visualization and help the newcomers to learn visual thinking the easier way.
The problem
So the background is this one — there is an internal application used by employees and the IT development team is releasing the new version of this application soon. The team wants to share the information about these new features in a friendly format, the idea is to shoot several videos that explain the specifics of those new features. The same time the team has observed from the previous releases that the application users would not notice the videos in their mailboxes since they are receiving far too many of those every day and they prioritize their daily work over some boring announcement from the IT folks. The consequence is that users do not learn about the new features, they do not use them to their best extent and as a result — they cut themselves short of the opportunities offered by the application.
The planned solution
It has been decided to produce a creative poster and put it out in a place where the workers inevitably find it, study it and get motivated enough to watch the video tutorials sent to them.
The step by step overview of the process we took
How many posters and where do we put it?
The first question we asked ourselves was to decide how many posters we wanted? The answer was quite simple — let’s start with one only. What if the approach does not work? Then the work is obviously wasted. And the same time it is very time consuming to produce a single one. So we decided to do it the agile way — let’s experiment with a single poster, observe the results and learn from it. After all, it was our the very first attempt.
The second question was where do we put it? To answer this we drew a schematic picture of the floor where the application users were seated:
We even took a tour around the floor to carefully examine potential alternatives. But it was pretty much clear to us that the best place to put the poster was the only coffee point on the floor, right in the middle of the plan. All of the workers inevitably visit the spot during the day so they will have to see the poster at least once.
Then we took a closer look at the spot:
So here is the thing. When you stand there and brew your beverage, you either look at the coffee machine, or you turn your back to it and contemplate what the opposite direction can offer you. If you take a closer look, there are two lamps hanging from the ceiling that are right opposite to the coffee machine.
So my colleague has had an idea to somehow hang the poster on these two wires so that it is perfectly positioned to be seen by people while they are standing and waiting for their beverage. At that point of time we did not know yet how the poster would be fixed though. I will cover that later.
What do we want to show on the poster? What do we want people to do after they see it?
Then the next question was about the content we wanted to have pictured on the poster. What is needed to be put there? Well, we knew that there were 10 features planned in the release so ideally we would want them to be announced. But after looking at the list of features, it quickly became clear that not all of the features very equally awesome. Some of them were cool, some of them were not so cool. So eventually we picked the four ones that seemed to be the most fantastic, at least we were proud of those the most.
Then the other question was what would we like for the people to do after they saw (and hopefully) read our poster? Well, the entire purpose of the exercise was to convince people to spend more of their time and watch the tutorial videos that explained the new features in more detail.
We have quickly drawn the make shift mind map to capture the main aspects about the upcoming poster. It helped us visualize the key elements of it and additional aspects regarding the language used and our ‘call to action’ for our audience:
- We agreed that the language should be Danish (since we are working for the Danish company).
- We want people to get inspired to watch the tutorial videos that explain the new features of the application in detail.
- We want them to learn about the coming release in general.
- We want them to learn about the four most valuable features on a high level by just looking at the poster.
What should be the structure of the poster?
First of all we needed to observe the available materials. Luckily we had enough of 3M Post-it flip-chart paper that is approximately equal to A2 format. I had my Neuland markers with me. With these tools we had everything needed for the job. It is important to assess your available materials as these set direct limitations on what you are capable to depict: the size of the media, colours available, width of the line (impacts the minimum size of letters you can produce) and so on.
With these tools we could produce something creative, the same time we did not want to draw something super-fine (in terms of the size and level of detail) as we did not want people to struggle to read small letters and comprehend small pictures.
Having thought about these aspects, I have started drafting prototypes on A4-size copy paper:
Let’s have a closer look at the finally selected one:
The structure of the poster would be:
- The title — it will briefly explain the observer what is this poster about.
- Four clusters of information that are equally structured. Each cluster will have an icon that represents the essence of the feature and a few lines of text for a more detailed and comprehensive description. The four clusters would be placed in the central part of the poster where there is a major focus.
- A smaller cluster which the sole purpose to educate the observer about the fact that there are even more features that are not listed on the poster.
- The drawing of people so that observers could relate them to the subject and to make it less formal and more fun.
- And finally the ‘call to action’ — our invitation to watch the video tutorials to learn more about the new features.
Then I spent some time prototyping the drawings to be used to explain the features visually. Let me give you a more in-depth overview of this process. In this particular case I started with more elaborate drawings and that is a very common trap. The point is that we love to draw and we want to impress our audience with the fantastic drawing and to flaunt our amazing drawing skills. This is a slippery path though. The more elaborate a picture is, the more effort it is for an observer to make a sense of it. And if you have a lot of homogeneous clusters of information on your visualization, then it becomes even more challenging for an observer to navigate in this visual mess.
Here is the example:
To the left is the initial, quite ambitious (and highly detailed) visualization of the feature. It features quite detailed drawing of the MS Outlook interface, then it explains that there are two steps of the process: step 1 you integrate an e-mail to the application and step 2 the same e-mail is deleted automatically.
To the right is much more simplified version of the same story, but without unneeded steps and with the detailed picture of MS Outlook interface replaced with a symbolic depiction of an e-mail.
We have decided that this level of detail is the most appropriate for the task.
Verify the prototype
Then I drew the final version of the prototype on a whiteboard to feature the key elements to achieve two things:
- Make a final judgement whether the format is appropriate and feasible.
- Perform the visual journey verification in order to possibly identify some flaws in the design (the green arrows and digits on the image above).
Let’s have a closer look at the latter. We assumed that the observer’s eyes would travel the certain way: (1) They will start from the title, (2–3–4–5) then they will go through the list of features 1 to 4, (6) then they will quickly read the info about more features available, (7) then maybe notice people in the left bottom corner and (8) eventually land in the call to action zone where we ask them to watch the video tutorials. Of course, that is the desired journey, I am sure people will not respect it and will inspect the poster their own odd way. But the point is that if your design fails even the desired journey, you are in trouble.
We are ready to go big
So the prototype has been verified and confirmed, it is time to render it on the big format.
No matter how many drawings you have produced in your lifetime, you are still scared to break the pure white of the untouched paper. Especially paper, where you cannot Ctrl-Z your strokes. Then do not forget about the powerful tool — the pencil. You can still Ctrl-Z that :)
What I also do sometimes — I use the Post-its to project the positioning of elements. The good thing is that you can easily re-position the sticky notes which is more complicated with the pencil drawing — if you do not like the position, you have to erase the element first and then draw it anew.
Now when it comes to drawing people, I prefer the cartoon style. In particular, I am a big fan of how people are drawn in Adventure Time. It is a nice combination of Western and Japanese traditions of depicting people and emotions, my favourite mix. So I googled ‘adventure time old lady’ and that is what I got. She is too sad, not a good match, but I can easily fix that.
Then I find more inspiration from Adventure Time and draw the other two characters — the jolly pal that is showing a thumb up and a young lady with a fascinated look.
Once all the elements are quickly outlined with a pencil, all the positions are checked and verified, it is time to render the main outlines. For me, it is the most nervous phase — I am worried by the prospect of a mistake that can nullify my efforts.
Luckily enough there were no big bummers. However I failed miserably with my hollow letters in the title, the hollow font is my weakest part.. I will try to fix it later, when I apply shadows and colours. These elements can fix some of your outline flaws.
Once finished, it is always a good idea to erase the pencil strokes. Even though they will not be noticed, I prefer to get rid of them:
Here is the result after all the main outlines were applied:
This might be a good enough result but we could achieve so much more by adding shadows and colours. Let’s look into that process in more detail.
My personal preference is to use grey shadows to create the perception of volume and to visually emphasise tangible objects. And I use colour to attract the observer’s attention to the key elements of the visualization.
In this particular case I will use grey for shadows and yellow for key elements. What are the key elements of this visualization? I think these are the three:
- The title. I want it to be the starting point and also it tells the story briefly, I would like to emphasize it with colour.
- The informational clusters that describe the major features.
- The call to action.
Therefore I apply yellow to these elements:
Now that I am satisfied with emphasis created by the colour, I am applying shadows to complete the poster:
The harder thing is to know when to stop. I follow this simple rule — when I know that I have applied all the needed elements and decorations but I feel like something is still missing — then I know it is the right time to stop. The problem is that if you are hungry to continue (and you usually are), there is a high chance to overdo things and even spoil the work. At least that is my humble opinion, you may think otherwise.
Fixing the thing to the lamps
The last step was to fix the poster to the lamps. We had to be creative: we took the cardboard box from the stash room and cut two long stripes out of it. Then we bent these along their length and formed some kind of V-shaped profiles. We sticked the poster to this improvised bar and attached the bar to the lamp wires. You can see the final result pictured in the article header. Gravity helped to finish the rest of the job for us.
Summary
I hope that this read was helpful and you get some practical insights for yourself to help you do your visualizations faster and easier. I really tried to convey that the visualization task is not only about drawing. In fact, it is a cross-disciplinary thing and you really need to take multiple perspectives in order to achieve a productive result.
Like and share if you find this article valuable. Thank you for reading!
About the author
Yuri Malishenko is an active practitioner, an author and a trainer on the topic of visual thinking and visual facilitation. He works as an agile coach for the Danish company and uses visual skills every day to co-create better software products and to become a better person. Check out his recent practical guideline on mastering basic skills of visualisation. If you like this type of content, follow Yuri on twitter @YuraMalishenko and facebook.
