visual thinking

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 to construct a great story

31/05/2023 by Ben Crothers

As I’ve written about before (and in my Presto Sketching book!), storyboards give you great bang for buck when you want clarity and direction in any project, especially for product and service design. Here’s how to construct the most essential ingredient: the story itself.

Storyboards can guide you and your team from problem to solution to experience to execution. They serve as explainers for an existing experience (e.g. a customer experiencing a problem), or as prototypes for a future experience (a customer achieving their goal using a solution). And by ‘drawing it out’, you can spot gaps in your thinking, and invite more effective feedback from team members and stakeholders alike.

A hand-drawn image showing how ideas can flow between people with storyboards — *Storyboards are great for clarifying and refining problems, solutions and envisioned experiences as a team*

Get your story straight

Whether you’ve never drawn a storyboard before, or you’re a seasoned veteran, it can be daunting to put pen to paper, let alone show your storyboards to others!

Never fear.

The most fundamental element of a successful storyboard is not the actual drawing. It’s the story itself. I’ve seen storyboards that weren’t that useful, even though they were sketched by people who are ‘good at drawing’, because the story didn’t make sense.

It’s the story that joins all the frames together. It’s the story makes your audience care. It’s the story that feeds their curiosity, sparks imagination, and keeps them reading to find out what happens next.

Don’t go on the Hero’s Journey

As a designer, I was taught the Hero’s Journey story format, the Monomyth by author Joseph Campbell, in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. On one level, it’s easy to see how you can use it as a way to tell your customers’ stories: by casting your customer as the hero, you can then illustrate a challenge they’re up against, and your solution as the Helper or Mentor.

Even when I first tried to apply it, I found it problematic. For a start, the way of using it I just described ignores most of what’s actually on the Hero’s Journey, including the whole point of it: the Hero returns not only conquering whatever Enemy needed conquering, but a transformed version of themselves. That’s what makes so many stories so endearing. Plus, do we really want our customers to go through the Abyss, and Atone for their mistakes…?

The diagram of The Hero's Journey, but annotated to show how it does not work well for UX journeys

And that’s only the start of it. It’s been rightfully claimed that when Joseph Campbell combed through the stories of all ages and cultures to derive a single Monomyth, he basically cherry-picked what already fit the prevailing cultural narrative of the ‘rugged individualist’. In this way, what he did was falsely reductive and colonialist.

Also: is conquering enemies – even metaphorical ones – the only way to resolve things? What about collective experiences, rather than individual ones?

If you want to pen the next Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, go for it. But I think our customers’ and communities’ stories deserve better.

The Freytag story arc

There’s no doubt that stories of challenge and achievement have a huge pull on us, and it’d be rude if I didn’t mention the arc from Gustav Freytag’s book Technique of the Drama. Freytag rationalised stories into 5 acts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action (or final suspense and resolution), and denouement (conclusion).

This might work well for the story you want to tell, but it always still fell short for me. Being mad keen on storyboarding my entire design career, and wanting to find a repeatable successful story framework that worked for me, my team, and other design teams, I extracted the best of what I could from these two and made my own narrative structure:

The Presto Sketching story structure

This story structure is purpose-built for product and service teams, but also works for change management projects as well, where you need to show an experience that involves either a problem with a negative impact, or a solution with a positive benefit.

And it goes thus:

A diagram showing the Presto Sketching 6-step story structure

I’ve done a screenshot of these stickies in Miro, to show that you can construct your story using words and simple sticky notes, whether real sticky notes, or digital. Let’s take a look:

CONTEXT – Set the scene. Who is the story about? Where is this character or protagonist? Why are they there, or what is their goal? This helps your audience to know exactly what’s going on.
TRIGGER – Show the motivation. What is the unmet need or problem? Without this, it’ll be hard for your audience to care about what’s going on.
SEARCH – Wind up your character, and let them go. What does your character do first (and do next), to try to solve their unmet need or problem?
KEY – Show what’s new. What’s the main feature or change that unlocks success from here on in?
ACTION – Let your character go again. What do they do next, that involves the feature or change that they have found?

At this point, your story structure will be different depending on what you intend to show:

WIN – Show the achievement. What’s the end-game, or benefit? How does your character achieve their goal? OR
LOSS – Show the frustration. What’s the negative impact? What is your character left with?

How to use this Presto Sketching story structure

You can use this structure as a way to synthesise and translate the various elements you have into a visual story that your audience can read and act on, based on the 6 ‘stages’ listed above.

Step 1: Set your goal

Decide what the goal of your story is going to be. This includes:

What is the main point you want to make with your story (and then storyboard)? Is it to explain a situation that needs attention/fixing? Is it to show a new idea in action?
Who is your main audience? What is their perspective on the subject of this story? How close or distant are they to the subject matter? What’s in it for them?
What action do you want them to take? As pleasant as it will be for people to read your story/storyboard, there needs to be a clear point to it. Do you need to raise awareness? Clarify and educate? Get them to empathise? If so, why? Do they need to make a decision of some sort?

Example:

Some how-to details on the Presto Sketching story structure

Step 2: Gather your material

You’ll probably need some material to translate into your story. This could include:

Customer interviews, survey responses, customer quotes, personas/archetypes, and other authentic user research and analysis
Product/service usage data
Existing journey maps and service blueprints
Existing or new ideas for user interfaces, processes, other other aspects of the experience or change you area designing
Existing or new product/service ideas, and ideas for how your customers/employees will use them

Step 3: Get 6 sticky notes

Whether you use physical or digital sticky notes is up to you. Both are quick and cheap to use.

Step 4: Get writing

Label each of the 6 sticky notes with the stage names above (including whether you choose WIN or LOSS). Then, try to write a succinct sentence describing each stage. Note: one stage doesn’t have to equal one scene in your storyboard; it might end up being one frame or several frames. That doesn’t matter right now.

Example:

Set yourself up for storyboarding success

Congratulations! Now you have the bones of your story. You have a sound, logical structure that has a beginning, middle and end, and that unites the various essential elements into a coherent whole.

From here, you’re ready to draw your storyboard. This can take several forms – office paper, large long gallery-style sheet of paper, PowerPoint slides, Miro canvas, you name it – but now you have a story that you can tell, and you can adapt to any of these media.

…and drawing the storyboard will be the subject of another blog post. 😉

So, what do you think of this structure? Try it out. I’m interested to know how it works for you, and how you might adapt it for your team and your project.

3 ways to visualise psychological safety for better team performance

22/01/2018 by Ben Crothers

Think about you and your team at work for a minute. How supportive would you say it is for everyone to speak their mind, try new things, and learn from mistakes? Is it a pretty open, encouraging team, or is it rife with politics? Do you feel like you can be yourself there?

This is what psychological safety is all about: having a culture where you and your team can bring your whole selves to work, speak your mind with respect for each other, trust each other, be curious, be assured that it’s okay to try new things, and not be penalised speaking out, or for taking small risks. Psychological safety is essential if an organisation wants to have a culture where inventing and implementing breakthrough ideas can thrive.

Using sketching to promote and embed psychological safety

That sounds like a pretty good culture to work in, doesn’t it? So how can you promote and embed that sort of culture? By using more sketching and visualising in your team, of course! Here are 3 ideas to get you going.

1. Draw project ‘horror movie’ posters

I’m a big fan of awesome movie posters, as well as pre-mortem activities, where a team can discuss what they think could go wrong in a project at the beginning of the project, and then discuss what they can do to avoid those things. This is a great way for everyone to be more real with each other, air those anxieties, and be more connected by realising that everyone probably feels the same anxieties.

At the beginning of a project as part of a kick-off meeting, ask everyone to imagine (in silence) the project as a horror movie or disaster movie, where everything they think could go wrong HAS gone wrong. Then, give everyone a sheet of paper and a pencil or marker, and ask them to each draw a promo poster for that movie, showing what has gone wrong.

The drawing doesn’t have to be good at all; just enough to get their idea across. And like all visualisations, just getting those vague thoughts out of people’s heads and out in the open can be really clarifying. You can put everyone at ease by showing them a rough drawing you’ve done yourself, earlier.

Once everyone has finished (after 5 or so minutes), get everyone to stick them up on the wall, and let everyone tell each other about what they’ve drawn. Then, discuss as a team how to avoid those things going wrong. It’s fun, it’s really revealing, and it bonds the team a bit closer together.

2. Do a ‘Circle of expectations’ sketch

Another good activity to do during a project kick-off, or whenever someone new starts on the team, is to do a ‘Circle of expectations’ sketch. Draw a big circle on a whiteboard, and write ‘IN’ in it. Outside the circle on one side, write ‘OUT’.

Set the scene by saying that everyone has a part to play in the culture of the team, and this is the opportunity to state what behaviour expectations we all have. It’s a good idea to demonstrate what you’d like everyone else to do, so go ahead and write something like ‘WE DO THE TASKS WE SAY WE’LL DO’ inside the circle.

Ask everyone to grab a whiteboard marker and write what behaviour they think everyone should have in the team inside the circle. And then ask everyone to write what they don’t want outside the circle.

Discuss as a group how to make sure that everyone does what is inside the circle, and avoid what’s outside the circle. This is a great way to foster honesty, and having each others’ backs.

3. Draw a superhero drawing of yourself

This is a fun and very insightful 15-minute ice-breaker activity to do with your team. Ask everyone to draw a simple outline of a superhero on a sheet of paper (you can use something like the image below as a template if you want).

Ask everyone to imagine themselves as a superhero, and then write or draw their own SUPER POWERS around the outline. It’s totally fine to be a bit silly with this; it gives people a chance to get past any awkwardness about drawing and sharing this sort of stuff.
Then, ask people to write or draw what they really value inside the outline; this is the POWER SOURCE of you as a superhero. You might want to drop hints by including things like authenticity, honesty… things that reveal what really motivates you.
Thirdly, ask everyone to write or draw their KRYPTONITE, the things that make you anxious, annoyed…the things that sap your mojo.

As with all of these activities, get everyone to talk through what they’ve drawn, and discuss as a group how you can support each other to stay connected to your power sources, use your super powers to help each other, and avoid the kryptonites.

Your turn

The only way these activities will bring better psychological safety to your team is for you to actually do them. Maybe try them alone first to get the hang of them, and then do them with your team. I’ve used these over and over again, I’ve seen them bring great benefit to teams, and I guarantee you that they will improve your team’s psychological safety too.

So if you do try any of these activities with your team, let me know, send me a photo… it’d be great to hear how they’ve worked for you!

Make your transformation happen with the Superhero Booth visual framework

20/03/2017 by Ben Crothers

It’s well known that visualisation helps us achieve the success we want to go after. This has been documented especially in sports performance, but visualisation – imagining your intended goals and how it feels to achieve them – is a skill available to anyone. I was at a meetup the other night, and I had a great conversation about how drawing is a really effective way to visualise goals (d’uh!).

And it reminded me of this great visual framework that you can use to clarify exactly what would turn ‘Regular You’ into a ‘Super You’. And it goes a little bit like this.

Step 1: Draw ‘Regular You’

Like other visual frameworks I write about, this is all about using a 2-dimensional space to organise and connect your thoughts, to explore a challenge or solve a problem. Grab a sheet of paper and a pen, or a whiteboard and a whiteboard marker, and draw the following simple pattern:

Draw a picture of you on the left, as you are now. You can draw a simple figure like I have here, or something that looks more like you… that’s completely up to you.

Step 2: Draw ‘Super You’

Now, ask yourself: if you were a superhero, what would your super-powers be? Have fun with it, and let your imagination go wild. Here are a few that tend to come up with groups I’ve done this with. Super strength? Maybe. Flying? Being invisible? Being able to clone yourself? Now you’re talking.

On the right, draw a ‘Super’ version of you (another way to think about it is ‘Future You’):

The Super You can be showing the super-powers you’re thinking of, but if that’s too complicated, just a simple figure that looks a bit super-ish is perfectly fine. Feel free to copy my one (above). It helps to put your initials on the chest, too. Example: I remember one guy in a workshop just wanted to be super PUNCTUAL, because he was late all the time, and it frustrated him. So when he drew the Super Him, he just drew himself with a massive clock hanging around his neck!

Write your super-power(s) above the ‘Super You’ figure, and now think about why you want those powers. Why would you want to clone yourself (for example)? This can be really insightful for you, because it shows what you truly value. We can never be invisible*, but maybe if we dig into why we want to be invisible, there might be something that we could do to achieve some benefit of being invisible. But let’s get to the next step first…

These super-powers are a bit of a metaphor for how we really want to be, and you may well see how they could become goals for you to pursue.

Step 3: Draw the Superhero Booth

Now, draw a big box in between the two figures, and draw an arrow to show how ‘Regular You’ stepping into that Superhero Booth, and another arrow out the other side, showing how you come out as Super You:

Can you see how this ‘Superhero Booth’ works as a visual metaphor? It makes you think: “what goes on in this booth that turns me from Regular Me into Super Me?”

Step 4: Stop I Start | Continue

Here’s where it gets interesting. Draw 2 horizontal lines in your Superhero Booth (see mine below), and write STOP, START and CONTINUE, like this:

Now, jot down what you think you need to (you guessed it) stop, start and continue, to become that Super You. Remember how I said to think about why you would want each of those super-powers? Think about the benefits of those powers that appeal to you, and what you could stop, start, and continue in your life and work, to achieve those benefits.

Be bold and set yourself challenges, and let this Superhero Booth be your map, to remind you of what you need to do. Improving yourself is hard, and there are sure to be some challenges in your way… but never fear; there’s a visual framework to help you with that, too. 😉

Try it as a team

Discussing (and sketching) what your super-powers are as a team is really insightful, too. What needs to happen inside that Superhero Booth, to take your team to the next level?

Here are some other ideas about how to use this visual framework:

Are you a designer or product manager? Try envisioning the Super Version of your customers (i.e. what would make them better), and let the Superhero Booth be a catalyst for connecting their needs with your offering.
Are you a project manager or scrum master? Try it with your team to help everyone improve each others’ performance
Are you in change management? Try it with different parts of your organisation, to see where they’re at, where they want to be, and what is going to resonate with them to get them there.