Ben Crothers

Draw more creatively with FLARE

25/07/2025 by Ben Crothers

If you want to find ways to draw topics more creatively, or you feel like you’re in a bit of a rut drawing things the same way all the time, then the FLARE prompts are for you.

How do you draw a person? Or a building? Or a tree? There are lots of ways to draw real-world objects, and we can use curiosity, observation and practice to draw these in satisfying ways.

A group of simple drawings depicting common objects like a lightbulb and cloud

^{Some simple images of simple real-world objects}

But how do you draw more complex and abstract concepts, like ‘innovation’, ‘strategy’, or ‘diversity’? It’s much harder, isn’t it?

A couple of years ago, Axelle Vanquaillie (a masterful visual practitioner, facilitator and leadership coach, and owner of the company Visual Harvesting) and I were discussing how to help people in our training workshops with this common challenge: how do you illustrate abstract concepts in more creative ways? We realised that many of us anchor on to one idea, and find it hard to go beyond that. My design background has always taught me that it’s always better to use divergent thinking, and that the way to have one great idea is to have 100 so-so ideas first.

With that in mind, we pooled our knowledge, sketched a lot, and swapped stories of various training sessions we had run and examples we’d come up against. And that’s how FLARE was born.

We’ve since used FLARE with a variety of different groups in training sessions, with a variety of levels of confidence in drawing, and it has always helped everyone be more creative and get more satisfying results from their drawing. And now it’s your turn to learn!

^{A participant in one of our training sessions reflecting on the experience of using FLARE to illustrate a tricky concept}

What is FLARE?

FLARE is a set of prompts you can use to help you move beyond the way you’re used to thinking about a topic you want to draw, and think about it in new ways. What you get is a much greater range of ideas that you can then refine and combine into one final image.

A drawing of the process of coming up with ideas without FLARE and with FLARE

^{The FLARE process gets you more initial ideas from which to create your final visual}

FLARE stands for:

Feel – What does it feel like? What emotions does this trigger?
Look – What does it look like? What are the real-world objects at play?
Another word – What’s another word (or words) to describe this?
Result – What is the result of this? What is the end-game of this topic or scenario? Is there a benefit realised? Or a negative impact that might happen?
Experience – What is the experience of this? Is it something where there are several steps involved? Or several devices, places, people or roles involved?

A drawing of the word FLARE with text expanding on what each letter stands for

How to use FLARE

It’s really important to understand that when you use FLARE, you don’t try to come up with The Perfect Image first. What we’re doing here is generating lots of different ideas first, to help us explore the topic in better ways, and then we go back and refine and combine our best ideas.

1. Write your topic in the middle of a big page

Start with a topic – especially a complex or abstract topic – you have in mind to draw. It’s best if it doesn’t include any clichés or existing visual metaphors. If it does, try to restate it in a clearer way. Then, write it down in the middle of a big blank page.

Now, write the letters of FLARE around it. We’re going to make a mindmap. You can also do this as a grid if you like; the main thing is to give yourself plenty of space to write first, and then draw your ideas.

In this example, I’m going to go with “Teams struggle to understand each other”…

A drawing of a prompt in the middle, surrounded by the letters FLARE around the outside

2. Ask yourself the first FLARE prompt and draw your ideas

The first FLARE prompt is F: “What does it feel like?” Too often, concepts are – well – too conceptual, and it’s easy to forget that whatever the concept is, it probably affects people in ways that might actually be relevant to capture. Jot down some words that describe how your topic feels.

A drawing with a prompt in the middle surrounded by the letters FLARE

3. Jot down ideas for the other four prompts

Repeat step 2, and write down any ideas you come up with for the other four prompts. Allow each prompt to help you think about the topic in new ways, from new perspectives. You should have a set of descriptions around your original topic.

Don’t worry if you can’t think of several things for each of the five prompts. Some prompts won’t suit the topic as well as others. If you get stuck, just move on.

4. Draw lots of different ideas based on what you wrote

Now we get drawing! Go back over everything you wrote, and do some quick sketches to capture what you wrote. Remember, this isn’t about trying to draw the One Perfect Image now, or even to draw the entire topic or concept in one go; this is still just brainstorming.

As I sketched various ideas based on what I’d written for this example, I made sure not to self-edit as I went. The more rough sketches, the better.

5. Refine and combine

Now comes my favourite part! This is where you channel your inner editor, look over all your various sketches from across the prompts, and choose the ones you think are most relevant, most compelling, and/or most insightful. There might be one that just nails it on its own, but typically there are a few.

As I went back over what I’d written and sketched in this example, the bridge idea really resonated with me, as well as showing several different languages. The going-around-in-circles also appealed to me.

Now, draw something that unites those several good ideas into one single cohesive picture.

Two different drawings illustrating the prompt

As you can see here, I landed on two different ideas. The first idea to illustrate the topic of “Teams struggle to understand each other” uses speech balloons and thought balloons… No surprises there, but positioning them on a roundabout double arrow added some more meaning. As I thought about my second idea with the bridges, it occurred to me that it could look interesting if either ‘side’ basically built their own different bridge, and even though both bridges are complete, they never meet in the middle. This speaks to the inward-looking nature that some teams have when they struggle to communicate with one another.

Which one do you prefer? What do you think you would draw for this topic?

Some tips to help

Here are a few other things to consider about the FLARE method

Trust the process! Too often we’re hard-wired to try to draw just one image that works the first time. Embrace the fact that it’s better to create and explore many options first, and then you’ll have more to choose from. And who knows, you might have some a-Ha moments about the concept itself you’re trying to draw along the way, as well as how to draw it.
Not all prompts have to be present in the final image. Try not to force an image that includes something that speaks to every prompt. It’s totally fine if your final image ends up just being about how your topic feels. It’s also fine if you land on an image that combines feel with look and result.
Feel free to skip step 3 if you like, and jump straight to drawing your answers to each prompt. I put this step in to help you if you’re more comfortable with writing as well as drawing.
Not all prompts will make sense all the time and that’s okay. They’re just prompts; if you’re stuck on a prompt because it doesn’t seem to work for your topic or context, just move on.

Taking FLARE further

I encourage you to give FLARE a go the next time you need to illustrate a tricky topic, or if you want to try illustrating a familiar topic in a more creative way. The FLARE prompts help you think deeper about the topic, and maybe help you to clarify your point of view, too.

With that in mind, there are other ways you can use the FLARE prompts.

Group drawing – FLARE is fun in pairs! Two heads are better than one, as they say, and if you try these prompts with someone else, you’ll both benefit from each other’s different experiences and points of view.
Facilitation questions – If you run any meetings at work, you probably know that great facilitation is often about asking great questions, to help your group have a better conversation. The FLARE prompts might give you ideas about how to enrich your next conversation, by helping everyone think about their topic in different ways.
Problem solving – As Charles Kettering is said to have said, “A problem well stated is half solved”. So often, a great solution lies in the way a problem is articulated in the first place. Using the FLARE prompts can help you and your team approach any problem or challenge from a different point of view, to perhaps reveal a hidden solution.

Feel free to drop me a line and let me know if this helps your drawing. 🙂

How adding a graphic recorder to your event makes it a game changer

07/06/2025 by Ben Crothers

Ever walked out of an event thinking, “Well, that was great… but what actually happened?” You’re not alone. Words fly thick and fast, but they don’t always stick. That’s where a graphic recorder (a.k.a. live scribe or visual note-taker) comes in. Here are 6 benefits for having one around.

I’ve been graphic recording at public events, conferences, and meetings for about 15 years, and even with the advent of gen-AI, these 6 benefits still hold true. Actually, even while technology gives so much wow-factor, we still crave connection, and in many ways, these 6 benefits are more important for events than ever.

🧲 1. It makes people look up from their phones

When someone’s sketching the conversation live in big, bold strokes, it pulls attention in a way bullet-point slides just can’t. A visual note-taker brings the vibe of “something really interesting’s happening here”… and suddenly, people are leaning in instead of tuning out.

^{There’s nothing like seeing a big drawing come to life before your eyes (pictured: Axelle Vanquaillie)}

Oh, and sometimes my clients are worried that graphic recording distracts from the speaker. What actually happens is quite the opposite! It’s like watching a documentary; seeing the action unfold while hearing the narration over the top is the perfect combo.

🧠 2. It helps brains actually remember things

Our brains are wired for stories and visuals, not just talking heads and dense jargon. A graphic recorder connects the dots with succinct phrases in attractive lettering, colour, layout, and metaphor, turning a wall of words into something you can see, remember, and talk about later.

And here’s something nobody talks about: a graphic recorder can make a so-so talk MUCH more appealing, since it helps to amplify the content.

🖼️ 3. It’s like getting a Polaroid photo for every event talk

By the end of your event, you’ve got a collection of boards that are like a set of giant hand-drawn Polaroid photos, or a ‘highlight reel’ of key insights. Each board is part artwork, part documentation, and 100% useful. You can take a photo and boom: your post-event wrap-up just got sorted.

The boards (or charts) also act as postcards of each talk, for your attendees to take with them and share (see #5). Of course each ‘postcard’ doesn’t capture all the detail of what’s in the talk. But just like a postcard, each particular piece in the postcard conjures up memories of that detail, to keep those fond memories around for longer.

^{Graphic recording boards making great souvenirs from a conference}

🌐 4. It makes your event more inclusive

Not everyone processes information the same way. Visual note-taking supports people who think better in pictures, who don’t speak the main language fluently, or who need more than just facts and figures to feel knowledged-up on the topic of the talk, or quick actions to try out.

A lot of what a graphic recorder does is to summarise a speakers’ content (or a conversation) by listening, synthesising and translating that summary into a visual summary. So in a way, the graphic recorder is doing the heavy cognitive lifting for the audience, so that they don’t have to.

It’s a win for accessibility and inclusivity.

📣 5. Hello, shareability

Graphic recordings are super snackable content. One photo of a rich, colourful visual summary can do more on social than five paragraphs of text ever will. It’s a dream for your comms team. And of course your audience will love sharing it, too.

^{Graphic recording works super well at sponsor conference booths too!}

🤝 6. It sparks conversations (and a few a-ha! moments)

When people see their own words or ideas pop up on the board, it builds validation, trust and momentum. It invites discussion, reflection, insight, even laughter. A live scribe doesn’t just record the moment; they shape it.

🧭 7. it’s great for strategy and decision-making

Wait! There are actually more than just 6 benefits. This benefit is actually my favourite. Workshops, planning sessions, roundtables, offsites… graphic recorders shine in these, and I see this play out in my own work all the time. They map out ideas in real time, reveal patterns hiding in the noise, and help groups focus better, and get aligned faster.

Think of them as visual GPS for complex conversations.

^{Even if it’s rough, graphic captures on a whiteboard help groups to focus and have a more productive conversation}

🎉 8. It adds that “Wow, they thought of everything” feel

OK, yes, there’s yet another benefit. This one’s definitely for the event organisers. Having the process and product of a graphic recorder around is a little unexpected, a little delightful, a little premium, and always interesting. When people see a live scribe in action, it tells them your event is top-drawer, thoughtful, professional, and designed for deeper engagement, not just an information dump.

Bottom line? A graphic recorder doesn’t just make your event aesthetically nicer and more engaging. They make it stick.

If you want help with getting a visual note-taker at your event, I got you (links to my business website, Bright Pilots). If you want to learn more about how to draw for graphic recording, look no further than my Presto Sketching book.

Volume 2 of Journey Mapping Icons out now!

04/09/2024 by Ben Crothers

I’ve just released a second volume of journey mapping sketched icons, containing 120 more icons. All images are in 300dpi PNG format, with transparent backgrounds, available for you to use in any way you like.

You’ll find some additions to existing categories found in the Volume 1 set of icons, including expressions, people, devices, technology, and buildings:

You’ll also find icons for some new categories, like weather, artificial intelligence, and digital lifestyle:

Who are these icons for?

This set is for anyone who likes to use drawing and visualisation in their work, to help themselves and others think better and communicate better when it comes to explaining problems and plans, and generating ideas and solutions. This includes:

Designers and Researchers – User Experience (UX) Designers, Visual Designers, User Interface Designers, Service Designers, Product Researchers
Product Managers, including Product Owners and Feature Leads
Project Managers, including Scrum Masters, Program Managers and Studio Coordinators
Marketing Managers, Community Managers, PR and Communications Managers

The icons not only come in handy for UX design (e.g. journey maps, user flows, task flows, storyboards), but also for business communication and generally spicing up any presentation slides.

You can use these PNG files in your favourite design software (Figma, Canva, Photoshop, Illustrator), presentation software (PowerPoint, Keynote), or even in online collaboration spaces like Miro and Mural.

Go check out the Journey Mapping Icons Volume 2

Discover how your customers tick with the Decision Factors sketch

26/10/2020 by Ben Crothers

It can be really hard getting a handle on what factors affect your customers’ decisions, or how to get buy-in from your stakeholders. The Decision Factors sketch can make it easier.

Why do we buy the products and services we buy? Why do we choose one brand over another? Why do some factors influence us more than others? Or why is it so hard to get teams to use a new system, as part of change management?

If you’re a researcher, designer, marketing professional, product manager, or change manager, you probably spend a lot of your time thinking about these sorts of questions. There’s an incredibly complicated soup of factors and biases going on in the way we make decisions, large and small, as well as various forces that play on those factors and biases. There’s also a huge body of ongoing research into the cognitive psychology and behavioural economics involved in decision-making.

I want to show you a simple framework that has helped me apply the essence of this research: the Decision Factors sketch. It helps you visualise the various factors going on as we make decisions for behaviour change, whether that change is to make a purchase, to join a meeting, to approve a design… anything at all.

What’s in the Decision Factors sketch?

As you can see in the sketch below, there are four main elements going on:

SUBJECT – Your customer, persona, stakeholder, staff-member… the person who you want to make a decision for change
OFFERING – The thing (idea, solution, product, proposal) that you want the subject to buy, or buy into
ATTRACTORS – The factors that attract this person to your offering
INHIBITORS – The factors that inhibit, distract, or otherwise prevent this person from making the decision to buy/buy into your offering

By mapping out the factors in this way, you can really put yourself into the mind and shoes of that person, spot gaps in your understanding, and enrich your own thinking about the relationship between your offering and your customers/stakeholders. Let’s take a closer look…

Attractors

By using this sketch to list out the factors that encourage someone to make a decision in favour of your offering, you pull the focus of the offering from its features (usually what we think about the most) to what those features are for. These tend to do with things like:

GOAL – What would this person achieve with your offering? This is the main factor that everyone thinks about, and is at the foundation of user-centred design and jobs-to-be-done theory. A decision cannot take place without the recognition of a need of some sort, to help solve their specific problem.
OBJECTIVE BENEFITS – What is better about your offering than the competition, or what the person is doing already? You should be able to list some differences your offering affords them, e.g. to do some task easier/ faster/ cheaper, to do better, gain more, save more.
SUBJECTIVE BENEFITS – What emotional need lies on the other side of the goal (above)? This is the factor we like to think drives everyone else except us… but we know that’s not really true. This is the factor at play in marketing messages and advertising. These are the ’emotional jobs’ in JTBD theory. Things like: make me look good in front of others, make me more popular, make me feel smarter/ sexier/ cooler/ more powerful. Make me more…complete.
TRUST – How much would the person rely on your offering? Past experience of something is our best predictor of the future performance of something similar. The trust earned from a previous positive experience is a strong attractor in itself.

Inhibitors

Inhibitors are the forces that turn us off, hold us back, or get in the way of deciding to buy or change, things like:

HABIT – People’s habits — their regular entrenched way of thinking and/or doing things — can be a powerful thing to have to overcome.
OBJECTIVE DRAWBACKS – There may well be specific disadvantages that are worth highlighting in the array of factors affecting the person, such as increased cost of time and resources. But sometimes behind these objective drawbacks, lie factors that actually affect that person more…
SUBJECTIVE DRAWBACKS – These factors don’t apply to all buying or behaviour change decisions of course, but they can still be powerful deterrents. What might the person be afraid of, if they decide to do/buy/use your offering? Is there a fear of change? Fear of loss of control? Or any limiting beliefs in the way, e.g. “I don’t know if I actually deserve this”, “I’m not worthy of it”, “It’s out of my reach”…?

Visualise the factors at play with different-sized arrows

I hope you can see that the Decision Factors sketch is more than just listing pros and cons for the subject. This is a visual, so we can map how big/small each of the factors are, with different-sized arrows. This helps you (and others you show it to) understand how these various factors might work together, or counteract each other, more quickly, accurately, and comprehensively.

What do I use the Decision Factors sketch for?

You can use this to:

Help explore how to make your product/service more desirable to your customers
Help analyse research results about customers’ needs and buying habits
Help dig into why people are/aren’t adopting a new product/service/way of doing things in your organisation
Help yourself prepare for a pitch to stakeholders, to attune your communications to what they care about the most
Have a more productive discussion in any 1:1s with staff or stakeholders

How do I do the Decision Factors sketch?

1. Draw up the framework

Start by drawing the basic framework of the Decision Factors sketch on a whiteboard, flipchart, or even just a piece of office paper. You can even put these elements together in an online collaboration space like Miro or Mural.

2. Use the areas as prompts for discussion

Now, use each area to help structure your thinking and prompt group discussions, all with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of how to maximise the likelihood of a particular subject adopting your offering. You can ask yourself or your group questions like:

What’s in it for this person to buy/use our offering / solution?
What is holding them back from buying it/using it?
What might distract them from making this decision?

Note! You don’t have to solve anything right now. Resist the temptation to justify your offering, or falsely ‘jack up’ the power of some attractors over others, or to rationalise any of the inhibitors away.

3. Capture and visualise the factors

Capture what you’re thinking, or what others are saying, on the sketch as you go. Messy is totally OK; this is definitely a case where the process of using this sketch is often better than the final product. remember to play with the size of the arrows, to indicate what factors are greater than others, or what factors you know you need to focus on. This can also expose some blind spots that you or your group might not have thought about.

4. Discuss next actions

Once you or your group have laid out and assessed the array of various attractors and inhibitors, now you can switch to ‘solution mode’, and think about what you need to do, to increase the chances of this person adopting your offering.

Is there something about your offering that needs to be introduced? Or dialled up? Or taken out?
Is there a benefit of your offering that just isn’t clear enough?
How might you change any marketing or communications to help people decide?
Are there any specific messages you need to put out there, to help people deal with the inhibitors?
Is there something you can do to help with a specific inhibitor, that would tip the balance in your offering’s direction?

Try it yourself

As I hope you can see, the Decision Factors sketch can be a powerful analysis and re-framing device. It can be fast and light – like using it right before you go into a pitching presentation – or it can be thorough and in-depth, like in a product strategy workshop.

However you use it, I hope it brings you might insight and success!

Here’s how your pen can break down walls

12/12/2019 by Ben Crothers

In the last post, I showed you an effective way how to chart out a goal and how to get there, using the simple ‘Build a Bridge‘ visual framework. It included a way to plot out the different steps you’d need to take to reach that goal, and the distractions you’d have to watch out for.

You might have been thinking: “What about the things that get in the way of achieving that goal? How do I show those?” And well you should. We come up against barriers all the time, don’t we? I’m always a fan of not loading too much into one sketch to explain something, otherwise it loses clarity. So here’s another type of sketch that might come in handy for you or your team. This is the Goal Barriers visual framework. Take a look, and have a go at sketching it yourself:

It’s pretty simple, but as you’ll see it will communicate a lot. On the left is you. On the right, the target is your goal. That goal could be losing 10Kg, or launching a campaign at work… whatever is meaningful for you. The idea is that you can shoot your metaphorical arrow and hit your target. Now I’m going to add walls in the middle, getting in the way of you hitting that target with your arrow:

It can be incredibly insightful simply thinking and visualising exactly what barriers there are to your goal. Try it yourself, and try to be specific: draw a wall representing each barrier you can think of, and write what the barrier is above each wall. Is it lack of time? A special stakeholder who won’t get on board? Another project in the way, that needs to finish first?

Let’s take this a step further. Just like a wall is made up of bricks, each challenge is probably made up of smaller parts. Draw a few lines across each wall, like this:

We can now add a question below each wall about how we can break down that wall. For example, if the target is to lose 10Kg, and the first wall is “No time to exercise”, the question can be “How might I get some time to exercise?” Now – and here’s another useful thing about visualising barriers and cutting them down – you don’t have to remove the wall entirely, but just enough for the arrow to go over it.

Visualise what are some things you could do to start chipping away at those walls. You might even want to sketch those on the same piece of paper, too. Pretty soon, your walls could look like this, and you can then hit your target:

So go ahead and visualise (1) your target; (2) your barriers; and (3) how you’re going to knock those barriers down. Once they’re out of your head and onto paper, you’re one step closer to knocking them down in real life.

Was it good for you?

I’d be delighted to hear any feedback or questions you have about this Goal Barriers visual framework. Imagine if your whole team could do this together, and start busting down those barriers together?

See a clearer path to your goal with the Build a Bridge framework

01/09/2019 by Ben Crothers

One of the best things about sketching is how it can help clarify your thinking. I’m sure you’ve had times where your head is swirling with thoughts, questions, worries and maybes… it could be about that important meeting tomorrow, or that prickly situation with stakeholders at work, or maybe something closer to home.

Whatever it is that’s keeping you up at night, getting your thoughts out of your head and onto paper is always a great idea. I want to show you a simple framework I’ve picked up along the way (I forget where I first saw it now) that has helped un-muddle my thinking a lot, and I hope it helps you too.

Visualising your goal with a simple bridge sketch

Take a look at the Build a Bridge framework sketch below, and why not grab a pen and some paper, and try drawing it yourself. It’s a really simple sketch, but I find it communicates a lot.

On the left side is you, and where you are right now. On the right side is your goal. That goal could be something quite tangible (like losing 10Kg, or launching a book by next July), or it could be more intangible (like a stronger team, or a healthier marriage).

Whatever your goal is, try to make it specific and realistic (hello SMART goal framework). You might want to even try drawing what that goal is, rather than a flag like I’ve done.

Next, draw a curved line from one side to the other. As you do that, visualise yourself reaching that goal. This is your bridge to your future. Now draw a few lines on the bridge, like this:

Those little lines across your bridge represent specific steps you can take to get to your goal. Think about these steps, and make notes above the lines about what each step could be. Don’t worry too much about the order and effort needed in each step; just get all those thoughts out as words on the paper, because you can worry about order and effort later on.

Next, draw a couple of crocodiles under your bridge. These are the things you’ll happily avoid now that you have a bridge to your goal (rather than swimming across, geddit?), but can still be distracting for you, as you try to reach that goal. Take a look at my crocs; they’re never going to win a Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, but they look enough like crocs to represent distraction.

Now, name each crocodile with a specific thing that could distract you from reaching your goal, like – oh, I don’t know – Toblerone chocolate, or too much scrolling on your phone at night rather than getting a good night’s sleep (guilty!).

“Ah, but what about the things that get in my way, Ben?” I hear you muse. It’s a good thing not to overburden one drawing with too many things. Plus, we’ll deal with barriers in another post…

And behold – this is a map to your future. Look at your drawing, and think: how can I get to each step across this bridge? Keep that drawing taped up in your bathroom, or on your fridge… anywhere where you’re likely to see it every day, as a reminder of what you want to achieve.

It works super well for businesses too. Here’s a variation of the bridge drawing, this time with a building representing an organisation:

I’ve drawn the steps as financial quarters, but these could be anything that represents meaningful progress for your organisation. Why not give this a go in your next project planning meeting, or company strategy meeting?

How was it for you?

Try drawing this visual framework yourself, for a goal of your own. Or, you might like to try it at your next project kick-off meeting, as a way to help everyone get a clear, shared understanding of the project’s goal and major stages, before digging into the detail. If this is useful for you, either for yourself as an individual, or at work, why not drop me a line and let me know?

Until next post, happy sketching!

Solve the right problem with the Problem Pyramid

23/10/2018 by Ben Crothers

Get clarity on a problem to be solved – either by yourself or as a team – by exploring it, reframing it and articulating it in a more insightful way using this simple visual pattern.

Ambiguity and confusion? You probably don’t have a proper problem statement

Have you ever had those times where you’re lying awake at night, with your mind gnawing on a problem, and you just can’t seem to think it through properly? You toss and turn, and as much as you want to turn your brain off, you can’t!

Or, you might have a project at work where you (and probably others too) can’t really say why you’re doing it. The project might have a goal, but still there’s no clear purpose. Sometimes people might even say smart things like “We need to know what problem this project is solving” (very true!) but still, nobody can actually articulate what the problem is.

Or you might even have a problem statement – or inherited a problem statement from somebody else – but it still just sounds like a goal.

*If this is a problem statement, what’s the actual problem*?

A proper problem statement – and I can’t believe I have to say this – should contain a problem. Something that is in the way of someone (or a business, or a system) achieving a goal. Yes, the statement itself can contain the goal, and yes it should say something about who has the problem, and no it should definitely not already contain the solution. Here’s a good guide that has always helped me:

[Persona / Customer type] wants to [Goal] but [Problem]. This is unacceptable because [Impact].

Note how adding the impact of the problem helps to say why we need to solve this particular problem, and maybe why we need to solve it now.

Is it hard to come up with such a succinct, insightful problem statement? Usually, yes. Do you come up with it just by getting a group of people to talk? Probably not. Problem framing by definition is all about describing a problem from a specific point of view, and we all know how likely it is that everyone is going to have a different point of view!

That’s why it makes so much more sense to visually map out the problem space, to get clarity and alignment first, before being able to distill it all into a problem statement. And that’s where the Problem Pyramid comes in!

What is the Problem Pyramid?

The Problem Pyramid is a visual pattern you can draw to help you explore and clarify a particular problem space, especially if that problem space is complex, ambiguous or misunderstood. You use it give more structure and meaning to any conversation about the problem space, so that you have a better chance of distilling a more insightful problem statement.

When do I use the Problem Pyramid?

You can apply this to all sorts of problems and in different situations, such as:

You have a problem, you’ve tried one or more solutions, but you can’t crack it yet
A team is struggling with the scope and purpose of a project, and needs a shared clear understanding of its intent
You’ve been given a problem statement, but it’s not helping to point the way to a solution
You’re ‘selling a solution’ about a particular problem to management, and you want to check your thinking by asking yourself the hard questions up front

What is the Problem Pyramid made up of?

Take a look at the sketch below:

In the triangle you write whatever you think is the problem you need to solve (this is the existing problem statement). The triangle (or pyramid) has 3 sides, which symbolise 3 different ways to explore that problem:

5 Whys – root cause analysis
5 Whos – perspective analysis
5 So whats – impact analysis

How do you do the Problem Pyramid?

You can draw this Problem Pyramid on a whiteboard, paper, even in an online collaboration space (like Miro or Mural). You can do it with your team as a session on its own, or as part of an existing meeting.

Let’s take a look at how you and your team can tackle a problem by visually exploring each of these ‘sides’ together. Be sure to share some markers and sticky notes around for different people to add what they want to, at different points throughout this activity.

Start by drawing a large triangle in the centre of a whiteboard, and write what you think is the problem you’re trying to solve so far inside the triangle. This may well change… but you have to start somewhere!

5 Whys

Problems are usually tackled more effectively when they’re addressed at the source, rather than tackling just a symptom of the problem. The ‘5 Whys’ activity is well known in the design and product innovation domains, and helps us do root cause analysis. For more information about 5 Whys, see the Gamestorming 5 Whys activity or IDEO.org’s 5 Whys activity.

Ask everyone why the problem written in the large triangle is happening (or what is causing the problem), get them to write their responses on sticky notes, and stick them in the area below the large triangle. For example: if the problem is “We didn’t reach our quarterly target of selling 15 thousand shinklebots“, ask them “Why didn’t we sell 15 thousand shinklebots?”

There’ll probably be several different answers to this question that you can read on the sticky notes that people wrote, and you may need to group any duplicates. Now, take each response, and ask why again. For example, if one of the responses was “The factory couldn’t make the shinklebots fast enough“, ask “Why isn’t the factory making shinklebots fast enough?”, and so on. The ‘5’ in the ‘5 Whys’ is to get you and your team to really push your thinking beyond the default top-of-mind cause. The deeper you dig, the better insights you’ll get.

Before long, you’ll unearth some juicy root causes to the original problem that as a team you’ll want to focus on more than others. It’s tempting to now race off and solve one of those causes, but hold up! We have to explore the other two sides first…

5 Whos

Next, ask everyone who is affected by this problem, and get them to write on sticky notes (one per sticky note) who they think is most involved, and group as necessary. Depending on the nature of the problem, it’ll be a mix of particular types of customers, or types of staff members, or partners…maybe even you and your team.

If the team come up with more than 5 (there usually are more than 5), ask them: who is most affected by or involved in this problem?

Why do we do this? Because it’s important to get everyone out of their own mental bubble, and thinking of others. This isn’t a blame game at all; it’s about seeing who’s who in the whole system of the problem space. Identifying different kind of people affected by the problem then leads to helping to see and describe the problem through each of their perspectives, which is what re-framing is all about.

5 So whats

Thirdly, it’s good to do some impact analysis. Looking at the causes of the problem and types people who are most involved in the problem you have generated so far, ask “So what?” I don’t mean “So what?” in a glib, negative way, I mean: “What happens next for the people we identified? What’s the impact of that problem on each of them?”. Whatever the answer to that question is, ask “So what?” again, and so on.

For example: if the problem is “We didn’t reach our quarterly target of selling 15 thousand shinklebots“, asking “So what?” generates answers like:

Quarterly revenue will be less than expected (business impact)
We’ll need to work out why (action to take)
There are too many shinklebots taking up space in the warehouse (business impact)

…and asking “So what?” again generates answers like:

We don’t get the capital needed to open the new branch yet (business impact)
We’ll need to temporarily divert some resources to do customer research (action to take)
We need to find more warehouse space for the incoming products (business impact)

You can visually capture these in the same way as the other two ‘sides’ of the problem area, using a mix of writing, sticky notes and simple drawing on a whiteboard. You might like to ask “So what?” for each type of person you have isolated, too. Doing this impact analysis helps you and your team get a keener sense of urgency about the problem, as well as a sense of the impact if you delay action, or don’t do anything at all.

Step back and see the story

Now’s a great time to step back and get a sense of the whole problem space you and your team have generated. You now have a ‘map’ of the problem. It’s bound to contain some areas that are more tightly defined than other areas, as well as areas that may be completely new and insightful for you and others in the team.

You can use this ‘map’ to join up some elements that stick out as being more important. For example, there might be a specific customer type affected more than others, and the impact on them leads to more negative impacts on others. Or there might be an underlying cause that the team needs to focus on and fix, which will alleviate most of the impact for most of the people affected.

This is how the Problem Pyramid has visual storytelling power, as well as analytical power!

Here’s what a Problem Pyramid looks like in action. Note, it’s normal for it to get messy first, before you can ‘join the dots’ and home in on a particular story to distill into a problem statement.

Try it yourself

As with all of the visual patterns I share, do let me know if you try it out, and what worked well, and what didn’t work so well. I hope this Problem Pyramid helps you see your problems better, so that you can solve them better!

How to draw mandalas

28/09/2018 by Ben Crothers

Have you ever wanted to try drawing mandalas? It’s more fun and rewarding than you probably think, and the results are probably better than what you imagine, whether you think you have no drawing skill at all, or you’re a seasoned sketcher.

If you’re after a free and easy way to relax, centre yourself, and practise a bit of mindfulness, it’s hard to go past drawing a mandala. It’s a great way to focus on something, and it’s not the kind of drawing that needs to be ‘correct’. But be warned! you might find it a bit addictive… 😉

Mandalas have deep significance in Hinduism and Buddhism, and represent the universe, from its grandest through to its tiniest sense (mandala is actually Sanskrit for ‘circle’). The act of making mandalas has always been used for focusing attention, for establishing ‘space’ in the mind and spirit, and for meditation. Even destroying mandalas has deep spiritual significance in Tibetan Buddhism, as a way of emphasising how fleeting life is. They’re also incredibly popular as decoration, which makes them perfect for wall art, greeting cards, tattoos, and so on.

Draw your mandala as a gift from you to you

Drawing a mandala can be really fun, relaxing and meditative, so long as you leave your inner critic in its playpen, and treat it as random discovery rather than a piece of performance. Just like zentangling, you start simple, and then take it wherever you and your imagination want to go, and make it as simple or as complex as you want it to be.

Materials

You can make mandalas out of just about anything; from coloured sand (like the Tibetan Buddhist mandalas), to paper, candy, plants, crochet, salt, even people. But for now, let’s stick to good ol’ pen and paper, shall we? You can start with as little as this:

Plain office paper
Pencil or black marker
Coloured markers / art markers of your choice

You can draw your mandalas totally freehand if you like, but if you want them to be super neat, and you feel like you need some more structure to work with, you’ll want these:

A compass
A ruler
A protractor

Another good idea is to use polar graph paper that you can print out and use as a guide. You can either draw directly on the graph paper, or place it under the piece of paper you’re drawing on as a guide.

Setting up your mandala structure

Start with a point in the middle of your paper, and use a ruler and pencil to draw lines through the middle, horizontally and vertically. Next, draw several circles with your compass using that point at the centre of the paper where the lines intersect. Try to draw the circles at various random diameters, rather than a regular pattern:

Now it’s time to think about how many sections you would like in your mandala. Drawing it in quarters is perfectly fine, but let’s go for eighths. Two 45-degree lines going through the same middle point should give you 8 equal sections across the circles.

You should have something that looks like this:

Starting your mandala

The hardest stroke is the first one, so go ahead and jump in by drawing a simple shape from the very centre of your circles, outward to the first circle guideline you drew. Here’s my first set of shapes:

It’s really important to take your time. Enjoy it. Don’t rush it. Draw each line deliberately and neatly. You’ll get a much better result. Also, do one type of line or shape all the way around before starting the next type of line or shape. Resist the temptation to go galavanting off doing a whole segment, and then trying to come back to the centre again; it won’t look as good.

Adding variety and imagination

As you continue drawing your mandala, don’t try to think too hard about it; just let the pen and your imagination go where they want to go. This is such a great example of intuitive drawing.

You can change up the type of shapes that you’re drawing, or stick to a theme, it’s completely up to you. Try circles, triangles, leaves, straight lines, curved lines and spirals…

As the mandala gets bigger, you might like to experiment with longer lines and larger shapes, like these petal shapes that end up overlapping each other:

At any point, you can go back over your mandala and add some thicker lines, and other shapes and details if you like:

Finishing your mandala

Sooner or later you’ll wonder when it’s time to stop! Getting to the edge of the paper is probably far enough, so try to leave a bit of a gap, like you can see here:

How much detail you put in is up to you. Here’s my finished mandala below, just in black marker, and again once I’d gone through it and added some yellow colour:

Try it yourself

I hope you liked seeing this mandala take shape, and I hope it gives you a nudge to try drawing one yourself. Start small, start simple, experiment with shapes and colours, and let it be fun and relaxing! Oh, and if you’re after other ideas for simple ways to get sketching, try these 10 ideas to get you inspired to sketch.

3 ways to add extra impact to figure sketches

17/08/2018 by Ben Crothers

Do you ever wonder why some figure drawings have a way of jumping out at you and grabbing your attention? By trying out these ideas in your sketching, yours can do that too.

Figures help your audience put themselves in the picture

Whether you draw for fun or for a living (or both!), and you want to liven up your work by making it more visually interesting (or both!) adding figures and faces to your communications makes a big impact. Our eyes can’t help but lock into the eyes of another face, or the pose of a figure. Why? To seek meaning and affinity. My own pet theory is that we are constantly looking to see something of ourselves, or to learn more about ourselves, whenever we look at art in general, and visuals in particular.

Or as George Bernard Shaw said:

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

Figures can do the ‘heavy lifting’ for business audiences

You can also use this to great effect for visuals in business communication. Take a leaf out of the advertising playbook:

Do you want to attract staff to be part of some change at work? Show figures thinking about and/or reaching the same goals that they have.
Do you want to highlight a particular product/ service problem to stakeholders? Show people being impacted by that problem.
Do you want to sell a benefit of a new product or process? Show people being happy when they use it.

In this way, visuals of figures are doing some of the cognitive ‘heavy lifting’; in other words, making it easier for the audience to relate to what’s being communicated, and understand what their response is.

Good news: you can draw figures and faces yourself, that can add a lot more life and impact to your communications at work, and it’s easier than you think. We’re not aiming for anatomically correct works of art here; we’re just aiming for the essence of a figure, or an expression.

In this post, I’m going to focus on figures, and show you 3 secrets to drawing more impactful figures.

1. Draw the body language

Most communication to each other we pick up on is non-verbal, and a big part of that is through body language. This differs depending on context, but essentially: what we say with our bodies matters. So, the poses of the figures you draw matters, too!

The pose of the figure you draw instantly tells a story about what they’re doing, and maybe how they feel about what they’re doing. People rarely just stand bolt upright not doing anything; showing them moving around, slouching, sitting, lying down, or doing various things adds so much more vitality.

Compare the pairs of figures below. Even though they’re really simple, the second figure of each pair communicates a lot more, doesn’t it? Your figures will have more character and appear more real (no matter how simple they are), which makes your message much more compelling to your viewers.

2. Draw people in their natural habitat

Just like how people rarely stand bolt upright not doing anything, people tend to exist in some kind of environment, rather than just in a void. Think about where your figure is, not only what they’re doing. Add a hint of background, something simple to indicate where they are, and perhaps even what time of the day it is. Add a hint of an accessory or something to add a bit more interest, too. When you use your imagination in your sketching in this way, you’ll ignite your viewers’ imaginations too, which will make your message more memorable.

3. Dial up the drama

Use a trick that cartoonists do, and try exaggerating the poses of your figures. This works really well when you want to cut through the noise of other communications, and imply more drama and urgency.

Try it yourself

So, there you go. I hope these examples inspire you to try adding figures to whatever your draw, and to add more character, nuance, movement and visual story to your figures.

For more creative sketching, try SNAILS

17/08/2018 by Ben Crothers

Looking to change up how you draw the same thing all the time? Or to boost the variety and style of what you draw? I got you: try this easy and effective SNAILS method.

If I got a dollar for every light bulb that I drew in my work, I’d be… well, I wouldn’t be rich, but let’s just say that the beers would be on me next time!

The point is: if you do any kind of sketching regularly, you might find yourself drawing the same old things in the same old ways, and you might be after some fresh ways to increase the visual variety of what you’re sketching. Whether it’s sketching for yourself (e.g. sketchnoting, urban sketching) or sketching for others (e.g. scribing, storyboarding, graphic recording, graphic facilitation), it can be easy to feel in a bit of a rut when it comes to what you draw and how you draw.

I got to this point fairly often a while back, so I started working on various ways I could spice up what I was drawing, to keep it more interesting and more meaningful. I’ve refined these various ways into an easy-to-remember method: SNAILS! I had the joy and honour of sharing this SNAILS technique as part of a workshop on using visual metaphor to explore and solve problems at the EuViz conference in Denmark, 2018.

SNAILS – An easy-to-remember set of sketching prompts

No, I’m not saying you draw snails on everything (although, hey, that might be your style). SNAILS stands for 6 creative prompts, or aspects you can think about changing whenever you draw something, to add more creativity and meaning.

SNAILS stands for:

Shape
Number
Angle
Identity
Line
Size

The SNAILS approach is a great way to take something you’ve already drawn and try a little bit of ‘visual first aid’ to help it visually ‘work’ a bit better. It’s also a good way to think more creatively about the topic, object, or concept you’re sketching. Let’s take a look at each of the 6 ways…

Shape

Changing the shape of an object can change its meaning, especially if it’s a visual metaphor for something. In the light bulb examples below, the shape of the glass changes to mimic other objects (e.g. a deflated balloon), to show what type of idea it represents.

Number

Sometimes adding more of the same object can add some nuance to what you’re showing, like one fish amongst a whole school of fish that looks different, or one bright idea amongst lots of ‘dim’ ones. A dozen fresh free-range ideas, anyone? 😉

Angle

Changing the angle – or your point of view – can enrich the meaning of the thing you’re drawing. It can give it more character (e.g. showing it viewed from slightly below looking up), or indicate that something is not quite right (showing an object upside down or backward), or movement (slanted to look like it’s moving fast).

Identity

If you’ve been following Presto Sketching for a while, you’ll probably know by now that I like putting faces on anything and everything. By putting a face on an inanimate object, you give that object an identity and an opinion. What type of face you give it obviously shows what personality or point of view it has, no matter how subtle or obvious the face is.

Line

This prompt is straight from art school. The nature of the line we draw says so much about what it is we’re drawing. Thin trembly lines indicate fragility or brittleness. Thick flowy lines indicate confidence. But you can take this further in so many different creative ways. Here are a few examples:

Size

Lastly, by playing with the size of what we draw, we can show how important it is in relation to what’s around it. For this to work, you usually need something else in the picture to give the particular object scale, for comparison.

Share your sketches!

I hope this SNAILS method has given you some ideas about adding some more variety to what you draw. Try it today, whether it’s on a whiteboard in a meeting, or in your sketchbook, or as part of live scribing. And as always, I’m keen to see how you use these methods in your own sketching, so feel free to share it on the socials and tag it with #prestosketching, or tag @prestosketching on or Instagram.