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Visual Insight / Women Inventors and Innovators Mural
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Greetings Participants in the CHI2016 Visual Communication course:
Working with you was delightful and I wish each and every one of you greatest success facilitating teamwork in such a way that you are leveraging the all the hearts and souls as well as the brains in the room. Each of you demonstrated the courage and capability you need to play this key role in the group--the mirror of ideas, the channeler of energy, the force for creativity and innovation.
As promised, I am sending you some additional resources. Please consider these in support of your own natural ability to visually communicate at human scale. Please write to me with any questions. I've already received a few and will answer them at the end of this post. Please feel free to comment so we can continue the dialogue and mutual support. Note: You may need to be logged into SlideShare to access these. If you have difficulty, let me know.
Resources:
Most but not all of you received these: Slides for CHI2016 Visual Communication Course
Link to online version of the 4 x 28 foot Co-Evolution Mural that was on the back wall.
Please feel free to download (but please do not share) this workbook we use in our Visual Insight courses: Visual Insight Workbook: How to do Visuals Live in Real Time
You can find many of the art materials in art or crafts stores. I use professional materials that are friendly to walls (no bleeding through or surface damage) from The Grove Consultants: info@grove.com (415) 561-2500 - This is where I order Charter Markers ($20/set), rolls of paper 4 ft x 25 yards ($45), razor knife ($16), tape (will not damage walls) $35. We did not have enough time for me to share all the details: Ordinary chalk pastels can be a great benefit in creating an abstract big picture in the background that you can fill in with details.
Also an important process note: The critical point in group dialogue is when you conduct a "gallery walk" or review of the mural(s) you have made during a conversation (usually I will have at least one mural per session or per hour of a meeting - it's great to see the walls become covered with everyone's ideas). So take time, preferably after each mural or at a good break, to go through what you heard, what you visualized, and get input from the group to add in.
Here are some Examples of Live Murals
Here is an overview of our different meeting processes.
A Visual Facilitator's Self-Experiment is my culminating project for an MA program in Jungian psychology about the power of imagery to participate in storytelling. (Images are not just illustrations, they are containers for truths that do not yet have words). It's the story of my own self experiment using active imagination, dreams and other techniques to access unconscious contents.
If you are looking for scholarly references about the use of images or big-picture visuals to facilitate collective innovation and co-creativity, the references at the end of the paper will be of help to you.
A Visual Facilitator's Self-Experiment
Here is an article I wrote for the Appreciative Inquiry Journal.
To support meeting effectiveness, please see these Roles cards that identify key roles for co-creative and safe-for-all meetings (enhancing diversity)
Please visit our blog for more about our projects and thinking.
And, again, please stay in touch!
QUESTIONS (thank you, Chairy)
How do you see the techniques similar to / different from video scribing? Video scribing is small-scale and private whereas live visual communication is human-size and visual to everyone. When you are creating a mural in real time, while people are talking, you become a visible channel of ideas, bringing in energy and creating a mirror for the group. It is a very human, somatic experience less about art and more about natural movement that puts a shape to ideas in front of everyone.
From your experience, do you find it more helpful to have one person doing all the recording or have participants in general to participate in “the scribbling process” (or have 2-3 recorders to share their perspectives). A This is a GREAT question. The answer is yes yes yes. It's a matter of personal preference of the practitioner and the requirements of the group. I personally prefer to co-facilitate with someone who understands the visual process. This frees me to listen carefully and go into my "nonverbal mode" -- capturing great quotes but also getting a feel for the big picture images, which requires access to my own creativity. The co-facilitator and I toggle back and forth. S/he calls on me for a "snapshot" of what is happening in the meaning, and I do a brief "gallery walk" (see above), the the facilitator can take the group to the next level. That said, sometimes there's only one facilitator/recorder. Then you need to play both roles. In this case, I highly recommend cfreating a template ahead of time. That is, bring in a big-picture visual that enables you to fill-in-the-blanks. For example, you could have a tree with branches and add words to that. Finally YES, it's awesome when there are multiple visual communicators enabling different perspetives. I've been in meetings with up to seven of us, each sharing murals and different perspectives. One of these sessions led to major policy change in an inter-governmental medical consortium.
Another participant and I were wondering if it would be too distracting for the consultant to record as well (it tends to be hard in interviews or usability studies in general), so we did a role play where the consultant also do the recording while the interviewee has a pen in the hand. To my surprise, it seems pretty fun to have the two collaborate. I wonder if this is because of the group size. Wondeful! You are taking the practice to the next level. I have long felt that the highest and best use of visual communication is when people are drawing together. We are just working out the logistics on processes for this, so you are out in front on this. Please let me know what you learn.
Welcoming more questions and comments from all of you. I'll try to keep the blog up, so ping me when you add something or have a question. eileen@visualinsight.net
Very best to you!
