How to Get Stakeholders to Sketch: A Magic Formula

Collaborative Sketching Is a Powerful UX Tool

UX professionals know that getting stakeholders and team members outside of UX involved in collaborative sketching activities such as design charettes or design-studio workshops can be highly beneficial. Participation in UX-led sketching sessions can result in:

• Increased buy-in for design decisions
• Diversity of ideas, due to participants’ various perspectives and roles
• Shared ownership of next-step design outputs
• Increased speed and efficiency in the design process
• UX exposure for people outside the UX field

In short, bringing people from a diversity of backgrounds together to explore ideas via sketching provides a range of outcomes that enhance UX professionals’ ability to be effective in their role.

Yes, but … Stakeholders Hate to Sketch

If you’ve ever attempted to spontaneously engage nondesigners in a quick sketching activity, you’ve probably heard this in response: “I’m not a designer! I can’t draw!”

Despite the known benefits, it can be difficult to get unprepared stakeholders comfortable with sketching during cocreation sessions. The idea of publicly producing creative artifacts in front of peers can be initially unsettling to some people — especially to those without a design background.

You can ease stakeholders’ discomfort with sketching by incorporating a few simple techniques into the process. These components will reduce participant anxiety and support the common UX claim that “Anyone can draw!”

The Magic Formula

Here is the formula, composed of four variables:

Fat Markers + Tiny Spaces + Time Limits + Ugly Examples = A Sketcher at Ease

Each of these four variables assigns structure to sketching, removes the perceived formality of the process, and enables collaboration among the team members. Together, these variables help stakeholders feel at ease in a group sketching session and make sketching as an idea-generation activity less intimidating for those without a UX or design background.

The formula is based on three underlying principles:

1. Prescribing participants’ tools (thick-tip markers and small spaces to sketch within) hinders the ability to get overly detailed or refined.
2. Setting a time limit restricts participants’ inclination to overthink or censor their ideas too much.
3. Providing low-fidelity artifacts (such as rough, hastily drawn sketches) as examples removes the perception that sketches need to be “pretty” to be worthy ideas or that participants need to be in a creative role to draw.  

First, Provide the Right Setup

The right instructions go a long way in easing potential participant anxieties that may arise at the onset of collaborative sketching activities.

Dedicate time at the beginning of your session to clearly introduce the sketching activity to your participants and explain why sketching is an effective method for idea generation and crossdisciplinary collaboration. Taking the time to provide this setup will increase understanding, and therefore, buy-in for the sketching activity.

When introducing your collaborative sketching activity to the group, make sure to stress the following fundamentals:

• It’s a sketch, not a design: Simply calling the activity sketching rather than designing sets the stage for the (more principled) instructions. The less intimidating vocabulary lowers the barrier to participating.
• The purpose is idea generation and sharing: The group will use sketching as a format to explore ideas (and not to design a final, detailed interface or solution). Sketching is simply a way to communicate and discuss different design directions.
• Detail isn’t necessary: The goal of the activity is not to create intricate, detailed interfaces or drawings; rather, the goal is to capture just enough to communicate participants’ high-level ideas so that there is a visual aid during discussion and critique.
• Aesthetics don’t matter: This isn’t an art project! Participants shouldn’t worry about how pretty their sketches are. In fact, the Time Limits variable of the magic formula ensures that there isn’t enough time to perfect and polish the sketches produced.
• Quantity outweighs quality: Sketching, in this case, is a means to output a broad range of ideas for discussion and exploration, not dive deeply into one or two well-thought-out ideas. Censoring ideas is discouraged by each of the variables in the formula.

Now we’ll discuss each variable and its role in making sketching activities less intimidating to people outside of UX in more detail. Each variable in the formula is subtle, tangible reinforcement of the main ideas outlined above.

Variable 1: Fat Markers

When creating a toolbox for collaborative sketching activities, choose thick-tip markers, such as standard Sharpie (or any other brand) marker. The thick marker tip limits the level of detail for the output sketches. In contrast, a fine-tip marker or pen inherently encourages detail and refinement. Participants simply cannot get overly granular in the detail of their drawing when the tip of the marker is not exact enough to allow creating precise UI elements.

We don’t want you to use the following example with your participants. (Because it’s not an art project!) But compare the etchings of Albrecht Dürer with Cézanne’s paintings made with the palette knife: super-detailed cross-hatchings vs. blunt patches of color. The tools employed by each artist strongly influenced their pictures.

The role of rough sketches is twofold. Along with reducing anxiety around the need for detail and precision, unrefined sketches produced with blunt tools enable more effective discussion. While a high-fidelity, detailed sketch suggests a final idea, a rough sketch invites open conversation around how to continue to improve the idea.

Bottom line: Provide your participants with thick-tip markers to prime participants to sketching ideas, not finalized, detailed interfaces.

Variable 2: Tiny Spaces

This variable works in tandem with our first variable, Fat Markers, to further restrict participants’ ability to get too detailed. In much the same way that a thick marker tip culls refinement, so does restricting the space available for participants to draw within.

There are several ways to create limited drawing space. One simple way is to provide standard index cards or sticky notes instead of letter-size paper and instruct participants to draw one idea per index card or sticky notes. One of my favorite approaches, however, is the 8-up sheet used in the Crazy 8s sketching activity, because it requires no special materials. Just have participants fold a standard letter-sized sheet of paper into 8 cells, and then instruct them to sketch one idea per cell. Shrinking down the available space shrinks down the anxiety of the sketcher, because it puts emphasis on idea generation, not refined solutions.

Bottom line: Limit the physical drawing space (by using index cards, sticky notes, or 8-up sheets) in order to discourage too much detail and refinement of sketched ideas.  

Variable 3: Time Limits

This variable is arguably the most important. Time is a constraint that prevents people from overthinking or censoring ideas. In fact, research by Leigh Thompson shows that, given a challenge, people will expand to fill whatever time is provided to them with no gains in either quality or quantity of ideas produced.

Time limits coupled with quantity goals (where the number of ideas produced is valued over their quality) move participants past the initial fear that others may ridicule their ideas and past the censoring that emerges when participants worry that their ideas need to meet self-imposed quality criteria.

The time limit should be clearly communicated at the initiation of the sketching activity. Use a timer with a visible countdown that indicates time remaining in order to keep participants on track and help them self-pace. A timer that makes a beep or other noise when the time limit is over will get people’s attention and prompt them to stop sketching. As the facilitator, you can also say “one minute left” to encourage workshop participants to quickly commit their final ideas to paper.

Bottom line: Give your participants a tight, clearly communicated time box to produce ideas, and use time limits to reinforce quantity goals over quality goals.

Variable 4: Ugly Examples

When we first introduce sketching activities to participants, we often put up examples of finished sketches or artifacts to communicate the end goal of the activity. This tactic helps sketchers visualize what they should produce.

However, be mindful of the examples you provide. Beautiful, neatly composed examples send the unintentional, silent message that sketching is an activity for “creative” roles only. They can be interpreted as “Make your sketches look good, or we’ll judge you!” Instead, provide unpolished, hastily sketched visuals. It can also be helpful to show a breakdown of the basic shapes used to convey UI elements (e.g., rectangles for images or containers, lines, arrows and circles) so that nondesigners fully understand that expectations are for very low-fidelity representations.

Bottom line: Show visual examples to communicate the end goal of sketching activities; however, the examples shown should be low-fidelity (even messy) and composed of basic shapes.

Caution: Don’t Limit Sketching to Interface Challenges

We typically think of sketching as a medium to generate ideas around product or interface features; however, sketching is also useful for exploring and communicating ideas for other UI-unrelated challenges, such as improving business processes, customer experience or employee satisfaction.

To adapt sketching to these nebulous concepts, generate a well-understood, straightforward problem statement or prompt question to guide the session. For example, if your project involves improving overall employee experience within an organization, your prompt for the sketching activity might be: “What does it look like when our employees are fully supported and satisfied?” Participants might sketch drawings of an employee with their family at a park to convey work/life balance, a clock stopped at 5pm to convey productivity through leaving on time at the end of the day, or employees on a team-building excursion to convey collaboration and healthy employee relationships.

Allow for disparity in drawing styles and subject matter. Some people might draw diagrams, others may draw singular objects, full scenes, or something else entirely. During critique, the facilitator should avoid commentary on whether drawings are “good” or “creative.” Let people’s natural ways of visualizing come through, and invite variety. You may be surprised at the creativity residing outside of your UX or design team.

Conclusion

Collaborative sketching is a powerful tool for generating and communicating ideas, whether UI-related or not. When facilitating a group sketching activity, use the following guidelines to ensure that your participants are comfortable and openminded:

• Set up the sketching session by reminding participants that the goal of the activity is to utilize sketching for idea generation, not to produce detailed, refined or aesthetically pleasing final solutions.
• Provide a well-understood problem statement or question as a prompt to guide the activity and focus the outputs.
• Use constraints from the formula (such as fat markers, small drawing spaces, and time limits) to restrict participants’ ability to be overly detailed and steer them towards low-fidelity outputs.
• Provide rough, hastily sketched examples to reinforce the irrelevance of polished drawings.
• As the facilitator of the sketching activity, keep an open mind and encourage a variety of sketching styles and ways of expressing ideas on paper.

References

Thompson, L. 2013. Creative Conspiracy. Harvard Business Review Press.