Skittle mapping

Jason Mesut
Shaping Design
Published in
4 min readDec 20, 2018

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A fun and useful exercise for mapping yourself and focusing your future in your own way

How to do it

An example (old) slide I use to describe how to do it
  1. Prime yourself by mapping themselves against different types of skills, competencies and qualities like the others in this Medium series
  2. Identify categories that matter to you. Ideally under 8
  3. Rate your competence or confidence in each of those that you have chosen using a single colour of skittle
  4. Choose another skittle colour and distribute 3, 4 or 5 skittles across the areas you want to develop over the coming year
  5. Choose a third skittle colour and add a skittle to each of the categories that you could help others with
  6. Discuss with your line manager. Gather up categories across a team to identify where there are overlaps and differences between the categories that are chosen.
  7. Take the areas for development and the areas ion which you can help others and take into a development cards exercise (more tomorrow)

Where it started

Early examples of skittle maps

One of the early conclusions of my Shaping Workshops was the creation of a personal skittle map.

A skittle map is map made of skittles illustrating key competencies (skills, practices and qualities) that matter to you.

It also allows you to:

  • Rate how confident or strong you are in those competencies
  • Focus where you want to develop
  • Identify where you can help others develop.

I used plastic straws at first. But then it became rather uncool to that. Since then i’ve used cocktail sticks, skewers, or lolly pop sticks.

Sugary counters

An example skittle map

Not only was it a relief to have some sugar for attendees after a few hours of reflection exercises. Getting physical is actually very powerful. While you model your own profile with something physical it helps you break free of a bunch of psychological constraints. And it’s fun. That’s important too.

Todd Zaki Warfel talks of using Lego in some of his sessions. But Lego can be quite expensive — albeit reusable. I have a bag of used skittles at home covered in germs. Maybe i’ll try it one day.

Different arrangements

There’s a bit of a split between those that stick to a standard graphic equalizer style layout and a more bespoke illustration.

The standard graphic equalizer arrangement is similar to the broken comb model that Jared Spool has popularised.

But, I do encourage alternative arrangements once you’ve established your categories. It adds to the fun and the thinking, i’d argue.

One of my favourite maps — mostly because of the notion of a stork of research

Why do this?

I have had a bit of criticism in the past saying that I only do this exercise to create pretty photographs.There is truth to an extent. After all, some of them do look quite appealing.

But there’s more to it than the aesthetic and the fun. As I mention above, I believe there are psychological barrier-lowering effects.

But, there are some important reasons I do this exercise:

  1. It creates useful closure to choose the competency categories that matter to you. Especially after being primed using a series of reflection exercises,
  2. It helps individuals to know where they feel they should focus. Attendees have to spread their five, four or three skittles wisely.
  3. It helps individuals to know where they could help others
  4. It helps the wider design team to learn about what people choose as the competency categories, the relative ratings, the development areas and the areas that people can help others

Since doing this exercise in my workshop, I have added a further exercise that was a bit of a revelation and super valuable for team development initiatives. More on that tomorrow.

Want to find out more, follow the series

If you want to learn more about the Shaping Workshops I run, and what I have learned over the years, follow me, or read some other articles in the Medium Publication.

Keep your eyes peeled for another post tomorrow.

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Jason Mesut
Shaping Design

I help people and organizations navigate their uncertain futures. Through coaching, futures, design and innovation consulting.