Practical Visual Collaboration in 10 Minutes

This is inspired by Typography in ten minutes, which promises “if you learn and follow these five typography rules, you will be a better typographer than nearly every writer — and even most graphic designers.” That short post then backs into a book that goes into brilliant detail on all things Practical Typography.

I wondered if I could create a similar kind of high value “essentials” list for the topic of Visual Collaboration. In other words, if I was to write a book on visual collaboration, could I lead with a power-packed post that gets you 80% of the way, then devote the remainder of a book to the more nuanced 20%?

Here’s my attempt…

Want to create a culture of visual collaboration? Here are the habits to model and practice:

• Everyone contributes. No designated scribe or note-taker. Everyone is expected to add and/or modify all notes.
• Every idea gets a sticky note. This is the only way to capture information. By writing an idea on a sticky note, you transform it from something fleeting and ethereal to something persistent.
• One idea per sticky note. This allows you to arrange and remix information later on. If someone adds more than one idea to a single sticky note, make them split it.
• Stick with a uniform styling. Basic, square, yellow sticky notes are fine — to start. At some point, you’ll likely want to work with these ideas, at which point you’ll need to make intentional use of colors, shape, borders (or not), relative size, tags, and so on. Keep these visual attributes in reserve, until you can make intentional use of them.
• There is no turn order. Ideas can be added (or modified) at any time. If someone speaking says something you’d like to come back to, capture that thought in the moment (using a sticky note). Adding a note isn’t an interruption.
• Everyone interacts, all the time. By giving form to ideas (making them sticky notes) we can interact with them: Sort them. Line them up. Cluster them. Make some bigger. This is all part of active engagement with information. The reason we make ideas persistent is so we can interact with them. Take advantage of these interaction possibilities, even if it’s just selecting a sticky note while reading it.
• Build on the contributions of others. Group ideas, connect them, or add to them — at any time. This applies to all ideas, not just your own. These social interactions affirm the ideas being shared by others, and create a positive feedback loop. Elaborate, question, clarify, extend the ideas being shared. Work and learn together — this is not group solitaire!
• Embrace ideas, not authors. In a digital whiteboard environment, authorship takes a backseat to the ideas being shared, which should encourage a more democratic focus on the ideas themselves.
• Contribute before and after. All these same habits apply whether the sharing happens in real time or asynchronously. Everyone should be encouraged to — and practice — sharing before and after the gathering ends, until there is closure on the activity. It’s likely that many ideas we can’t think of in the moment will arrive at another time.

Building upon the habits listed above, here are three observations I’ve made (or picked up) regarding most forms of visual collaboration:

1. Frameworks can emerge, be introduced, or prepared ahead of time. Beyond the baseline habits listed above, a great deal of what follows has more to do with frameworks. These frameworks may: (1) Emerge from the activity, (2) Be introduced to provide a defined structure, or (3) Be prepared ahead of time, as predefined containers for the various ideas.
2. Input and Output. At the highest level, most workshop activities can be boiled down to inputs and outputs. The output of one activity serves as the input to the next. And so on.
3. Flare, Explore, Focus, and Connect. Most workshop activities align to one of these four verbs. Generating ideas (flaring) and closing in on a few ideas (focusing) are quite common. We don’t talk enough about holding space to explore ideas, options, and perspectives — with no goal beyond shared understanding. The final verb (connect) is about connecting with ourselves and others, and is distinct from the other 3 verbs in that the object of focus is on us as participants.

What do you think? What would you add, modify, merge, etc?