We've just published the latest episode of The Sketchcast, the show showcasing people who are using sketching to change the world! In this episode I had the good fortune of chatting to Shirley Wu, whose data visualisations achieve that enviable balance of providing insight into large data sets, while at the same time still managing to be stunningly beautiful to look at.

We cover a range of topics, including:

• how she got started in the data visualisation field
• the process she follows for creating her amazing visualisations
• how she balances client work and personal projects

We also get a little side-tracked discussing our mutual love of Hamilton, the hip-hop musical (I edited most of this out, but there are a few funny Hamilton stories at the end, if you're a fellow fan).

As always, I've peppered the interview with visual notes that I took of our chat, and I've also included a bunch of examples of Shirley's work that really are amazing to explore. Who knew that data could look so beautiful?

That said, for those of you who like their podcasts while they're driving or exercising, there's an audio version version up on Soundcloud without all of the visual treats.

Tools and websites mentioned in the show:

• D3
• Data Visualization Society
• Shirley's website
• Datasketch|es
• Shirley's interactive visualisation of every line in Hamilton, the musical
• One Anti-Racist Action A Day

Visual notes of the interview:

There's also a full transcript below. Leave me a comment—I'd love to hear who you think I should interview next!

Full transcript:
Matthew:
Hello, again, subscribers, viewers, listeners, sketchers. Welcome to the Sketchcast, the show that teaches you how to be amazing with sketching and where I get to interview people who are using sketching to change the world.
Matthew:
First up, thank you so much for everyone who listened or viewed the first episode and liked or shared or commented on it. It was so great to hear that so many of you thought this was a worthy exercise. I do apologize that I can't commit to a tight schedule at this stage, but I do love doing these and I kind of figure, quality over quantity. So thank you for your patience and thank you for your support.
Matthew:
In today's episode, I talk to Shirley Wu, the incredibly talented data visualizer from San Francisco. That's right. Today's guest does not use pens or markers to sketch, although that's not really true, as you'll hear later. She uses code and data. Her creations look stunning. They bring clarity and insight to large datasets. It's such a great chat. I can't wait for you to hear it. Shirley talks about her process, about the principles she uses to create her stunning data visualizations, about how she chooses her aesthetic, and we also get a bit sidetracked talking about hip-hop musicals, but that's okay because everyone loves a bit of hip-hop musical theatre, right? As always, I've also created visual notes for this chat and included them throughout the interview. So hopefully, you find them amusing.
Matthew:
Today's episode is brought to you by Sketch Group. At Sketch Group, we sketch your story. We believe sketching can be transformational and that the right images are the best way for your message to be heard, by the people who need to hear it. Our team of illustrators and graphic recorders have years of experience creating imagery for your brand, your conference or your remote workshop. Bring your story to life at sketchgroup.com.
Matthew:
Shirley Wu, welcome. It's so great to have you on the show for a number of reasons, which we'll get into in a minute. But before we start, tell me, how are you? How is life in San Francisco, as we navigate this weird thing that is 2020?
Shirley:
Yeah. It's weird. I think you mentioned a little bit earlier about trying to figure out what to do in this time. Similarly, I'm a freelancer, and at the beginning of the pandemic, everything kind of... All of my clients kind of went away. So it's been a very interesting time trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces and regroup.
Shirley:
But other than that, there's a heatwave going on right now. So it's really hot.
Matthew:
Wow. Yeah. So, well, I'm so glad to hear that you're managing to survive and that you're being distracted by the heat. Why don't you start with you telling us your story, telling us how you came to be doing what you do and a little bit about yourself.
Shirley:
Yeah. So my name is Shirley, and the title I've given myself as a freelancer is an independent creator of data visualizations. And it's just like a title that just means that I work with a bunch of different clients and I help them tell visual stories with their data. And so, oftentimes, they'll have a dataset that they want to do something with and I'll work with them, try and figure out if there's anything interesting in there, I'll design and prototype with them, and that's where kind of the sketching part comes in. And then, I will code and implement the visualizations in the web.
Shirley:
And I guess how I came to it is kind of this, it felt roundabout but I guess it's not at all, in that I studied business in a university and I thought I was going to go into finance. I really did not like it. I ended up picking up some computer science classes. And when I graduated, I started as a software engineer at a big data company. This was when people were still trying to figure out what big data was. And because of that, I got introduced to this JavaScript library called D3. And that is kind of now probably the defacto JavaScript library for creating data visualizations on the web. And that's how I found out about this whole practice of turning data into visuals. And yeah, so it felt roundabout, but actually it was quite straightforward.
Matthew:
So often we think of people as having an affinity for one thing, like we might say, "She's really into the arts," or, "He's really good at maths and programming," but the work that you do, without fanboying too much, it is both beautiful and technically accomplished. I've also worked as a software developer in the past, so I can appreciate, I mean, you're really kind of pushing the boundaries technically on some of... for what technology can do in the browser. So how does one go about becoming a polymath and deep-diving on more than one area? How do you learn?
Shirley:
Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, like you said, even as a child, I really loved both sides. I loved art. And I think a relative gifted me a paint set when I was four, a watercolour paint set when I was four, and I kind of doodled all my life. I don't know where those doodles are. I'm kind of scared to find them. So that's why they're not being shared. And I took art all four years of high school, but then when I went to university, somehow I convinced myself that I wasn't going to do art because that's not a way to make a living. So that's how I started taking computer science classes.
Shirley:
But even growing up, at the same time as all of those doodling and art classes, I also always really enjoyed math. I really enjoyed how logical it was, that there is an answer that we're trying to get to. I really loved that. And that's the same thing with computer science. I really loved the, for most things, it's there is a answer that we can get to. It's either going to work or not work and it might have some bugs, but it will work or not work. And so, that's kind of the driving factor of, I just have always loved both.
Shirley:
As for how to go about doing that, I'm not sure if I have a vice or anything. I think it's just that I do feel that, as a society, we tend to just get so bogged down to like, "Oh, you need to specialize in this one thing." Or you need to be either like, "If you're an artist, you can't be logical," or all of those things that you just mentioned before.
Shirley:
And I guess the only thing I'll say is, just reject that. I get frustrated with these kind of boxes that we put each other into and just, if you enjoy something, go for it. And for me, it's like, I get a special amount of joy when I push the boundaries of the web. Some of the projects that you might have seen, I get a particular joy when I'm pushing it to the limit. Or one time I found a bug in Chrome, because of I was working in Canvas and it was just like, I just used it in a way they didn't expect. And so, yeah, I just kind of enjoy that.
Matthew:
Amazing. So can you talk to me a bit about your process? How do you go about finding a dataset and then through to it looking beautiful and telling the story that evolves from the data?
Shirley:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So one of the things that I firmly believe in is that, for me, it's really important that I start with kind of a curiosity or an interest about something in the world. And what I mean by that is I think the way that you found me was through my visualization on Hamilton, the musical, and that one was, I was obsessed back in 2016. So I created the visualization in 2016. And I first learned about the musical in maybe mid-2016. And I was so obsessed. I loved it. I loved. You've also said this, you said that you and your whole family watched it. Yeah.
Matthew:
We can geek out about Hamilton later but yeah, go on.
Shirley:
At one point and I loved kind of the lyrics and I love how empowering it was. And this was just listening to the cast recording on Spotify. And even then, I just had it on repeat for months. And I was so obsessed that I started feeling like, "Oh, there's all these repeated phrases. And there's probably some really interesting analysis, like literary analysis we can do because it's so intense. It's so beautifully constructed and intentionally done." And my husband was like, "Okay, why don't you just make a visualization?" And I'm, "No, that's too obsessive." And then a few days later, I was like, "Okay, I'm that obsessive." And so then I went out and I essentially made my own dataset because while the lyrics are online, the information about where the repeated phrases were... first of all, what is kind of this set of repeated phrases? Can we group them? Who sang them? Where did they sing them? And then additionally, who conversed with each other? Who kind of had the most co-occurrences? All of that wasn't anything readily available online.
Shirley:
So I spent three days manually going through the lyrics twice, the first time around to kind of jot down all of that information and the second time to manually enter it. And that's what I mean though, about having that curiosity, because I think that curiosity really drives me through some of the toughest points of creating something. Because I feel like, especially with self-motivated projects, there's always that kind of slump where I don't know how to get out of it. And I think when it's something that's motivated by my own curiosity, I tend to be able to come out on the other side of this.
Shirley:
So always start with curiosity, and then it's analyze the data, try and sketch out some ideas, and then see if it works with the data and kind of rinse, repeat with a sketch and a code until I get something.
Matthew:
Very cool. So we'll share some of your sketches for some of the projects that you've worked on, but tell me how, apart from being obsessed with something because of music and the story, how else do you go about choosing projects?
Shirley:
Oh, yeah. So for quite a long time, so I have a project called Data Sketches with my friend, Nadieh Bremer, and that project was... the idea behind it was we would choose 12 different topics and we would go out and we would create a whole data visualization and we would document the whole process. And so for the longest time, it was kind of dictated by the topics that we chose together, and all of those topics were things that we thought would be really fun. So we started out with movies and then it was always kind of topics that were broad enough so that we can both have our own spin on it.
Shirley:
So for example, for movies, my personal curiosity was I'm really bad at pop culture references. And I've always thought that that's because I just have never watched enough movies. So the visualization I did was I went and gathered all the top summer blockbuster movies, data on them, since I've been alive. And then I visualized their information. And then I also took a look at which ones I've actually watched. And it turns out I've only watched 17 of them. I was like, "Oh, this makes sense."
Shirley:
But I guess it's kind of things that I notice in my life and then get curious about. So there was another one in Data Sketches, we called it Myths and Legends. And for that particular one, I was trying to figure out what's a legend or a myth that I'm really curious about. And it turned out that I realized that I couldn't list as many notable women figures in history. And even thinking about my history textbooks, I just couldn't think of that many women's names. And that's when I went and found a list of the women Nobel Laureates and that's how I ended up visualizing that one.
Shirley:
So it really is just whatever I come across in life, in daily life. And I'm like, "Oh, I wonder." And that's how it happens. And other than that, it's clients coming to me with a specific dataset.
Matthew:
And is the data that you're after generally available for free online, or do you have to get creative in sourcing it?
Shirley:
It depends, again, because it's just whatever I'm curious about. It depends. So for some of the most kind of serious and sensitive topics, those are ones that I usually have worked with a client, I've partnered with a client with, because either they have that dataset already.
Shirley:
So there's an example where Nadieh and I worked with the Guardian, the US Guardian team on a story about homelessness in the United States. There's a program in quite a few American cities where it's called the Homeless Relocation Program and they buy bus tickets for homeless people to travel to a different city. In that particular dataset, the Guardian team, their reporters has spent 18 months gathering that data because they would kind of... I can't remember what the name of it was, but then they would contact the city and ask for those records. And then they would, oftentimes because it was in PDF or even sometimes handwritten, they would manually enter it into Excel.
Shirley:
So in that case, I was lucky because as a non-journalist, I would probably not have access to that, but for some of the most kind of sensitive, it's usually I try to work with experts, mostly because I wouldn't have access to it. But for some of the kind of funner pop culture sort of things, it's usually quite available online. It's usually I'll do some Google searches. And the tip I've found in terms of finding a dataset that is well-cleaned and well-formatted is to Google for the dataset, whatever the topic, and write GitHub. And if I include in the search term, GitHub, and it'll usually turn up a GitHub repo of where someone has already gone and cleaned the dataset. So that is a little tip that I've learned over the years. But other than that, I'm... Sorry, what?
Matthew:
I just said, that's a great tip.
Shirley:
Thank you. And then, APIs, many APIs, I tend to do a lot of, I get curious about the social media, I get curious about Instagram or YouTube videos. And so, they have really well-documented APIs. So any combination of those, usually, it's some combination of automated scripts and manual entry, and it's like a gradient.
Matthew:
Very good. So it's okay. Excuse me. It's one thing to be able to code the data and present it in the way that you want it. It's another thing to make it look beautiful. What are your influences on the aesthetic that you choose? How have you landed upon the style for your visualizations?
Shirley:
Yeah, that's a tough one. I feel like it's kind of all over the place for me. I think I just experiment and then I'm like, "Oh, this looks pleasing." A top-level answer is I just kind of try, I throw things and then see what sticks, but I guess to kind of try to be more specific about it, I feel like there's, at least within kind of data visualization and information design, I feel like it's a little bit different in practice from graphic design or visual design, in that, personally, I think to make it aesthetically pleasing, there's two, maybe three main things that I'm trying to get a good balance of.
Shirley:
The first is typography, because information, and I do the lazy non-design student, like non-trained design, self-taught designer thing where I'm just like, "Oh, this one book about typefaces mentioned this typeface. So it must be a good one." And I just choose that, I choose a serif font, and sometimes I'll choose my default sans-serif and I just use those for every single project. And that's been nice because then people are like, "Oh, this is Shirley's work. Because it's like a..."
Shirley:
Then the second thing is colour. So then, I usually with visualizations, colour is such a big, important visual channel for kind of communicating the information. So oftentimes, I'll end up with either a very white background or a very dark background. And then, I can use colour to communicate something. So then I kind of have a colour palette that I, when I first started freelancing, I just made a colour palette for myself. And then that's the colour palette that I choose from every time I do a project, which again, gives it a very similar feel between my projects.
Shirley:
Then the last one is kind of the layout and that one is really kind of dependent on the project, but yeah, so that's from kind of like a visual side of how I go about things.
Shirley:
Then from kind of like a conceptual side, I really like this concept of a visual metaphor, which in data visualization is whatever visuals that you choose. So actually, let me back up a little bit and say that in visualization, there's a concept called marks and channels. And so, what marks mean is these geometric shapes, so circles like dots or the rectangles or bars that you might map your data to, and visual channels are kind of the modifiers for that. So maybe the X, Y position in which you placed those marks or maybe the colour of it or the dimension, the width, height of it. And so, when I think about a visualization project, I sometimes try to think about what kind of marks or how can I choose some my marks or channels such that it actually ties back into the dataset itself.
Shirley:
So for the Hamilton one, because it was a musical, the way that I tried to represent the themes was kind of with these like kind of arts and characters that I was inspired from musical sheets. And so, that's the kind of conceptually, I tried to think about visual metaphors that might help tie the dataset, the visualization back to the dataset.
Matthew:
It seems your business model is to make cool stuff and put it on the internet and then people see it and come and ask to work with you, which is not that dissimilar to how I started Sketch Group, making videos and doing graphic recording. Is that a viable business model? Is that your approach?
Shirley:
Yeah. So I've been freelancing for the last four years. Wait. Okay. So short answer is, I'm not sure. The longer answer is I've been doing this for four years and it's worked out pretty well for me.
Shirley:
So the Hamilton project was in 2016, right after I went freelance. So that definitely helped put my name out there more. And all of the kind of subsequent projects that I've published have really helped. And so, there's clients coming in, client requests coming in. I'm very grateful for it.
Shirley:
At the very beginning, the reason why I went this way of putting things out and then waiting for inbound client requests instead of cold-contacting any specific client was because I realized that data visualization was so niche, that most people that I thought I might want to work for or work with, either didn't quite know what it was or didn't quite know why they needed it, or even if they did, they didn't have a budget available for it. So when I first started, I really kind of relied on people finding me and that way they already had a project in mind. They already had a budget in mind.
Shirley:
It's been four years. And the way I think about it has changed a little bit in that I think I've gotten, for better or for worse, I've gotten a little bit pickier about the projects I take and the topics that I'm interested in. And so, I'm kind of at that weird limbo stage where I think that I'm too picky for the requests that are coming in and not reputable enough for all of the projects that I want to take on, if that makes sense. So I am trying my best to kind of start reaching out to organizations that I really respect and start trying to kind of pitch ideas or stories, but certainly, I feel very nervous doing that.
Matthew:
So these projects that you take on as your kind of personal portfolio, how do you manage your time between spending hours and hours, it must be, on them and paying the bills and doing the projects that people want to pay you money for? That must be a difficult tension to, a difficult balance, to maintain.
Shirley:
Yeah, definitely. It's been quite difficult. I think the projects that I've felt have been, I guess, the most successful in terms of time management, have been those that I would have wanted to do on my own anyways, but just because personal projects I like to use as kind of experimentation for figuring out new technologies or new personal style or... So trying to find something that I want to do and then pitching clients to let me do it. And so, that way, the client project is the personal project. So those are the most successful ones, but obviously, that doesn't happen all the time.
Shirley:
So there are definitely months, I go mostly just doing client projects and then once those are done, I try to do a little bit of my personal projects or it's that I'm doing multiple at a time. And those are very confusing times because I'm just constantly context switching. And most of my projects take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. And so, it gets to be a lot. I have some projects that I've just never been able to finish.
Shirley:
But sometimes, it's also quite nice to have the personal project and client project to kind of bounce back and forth from, when I'm stuck on one or the other. So I don't have a hard and fast rule of this is how I schedule myself. It's kind of whenever the clients come in and whenever I schedule them. And then, other times, I like either... Well, so I guess currently for when COVID first started, it was that there were no clients I could schedule, but I also tried to take some time off between clients so that I could do kind of these personal projects.
Matthew:
And how important do you think it is having, I guess it's like an accountability partner in Nadieh, in terms of moving those personal projects forward?
Shirley:
Oh yeah, definitely. I have this joke that I spend, or it's not a joke, but it's something I've accepted about myself that I like thinking and planning for the future more than I like... what's the word? I dream more about the future than I do about the present. So I'm definitely between... And Nadieh's very much, very focused on the present. So it works really well to work with her because I tend to be the one that's like, "Oh. Here's all the ideas, let's do this with a project or let's do." So I'm always looking a few months ahead of what I want to do. And then she's the one that's like, "Shirley, you need to finish this project that you're working on currently." So I really appreciate it. And I definitely need that kind of accountability to be like, "Finish thing that's present."
Shirley:
So my newest thing is trying to do that via Twitch streams. So Twitch, I livestream my database projects; I'm going through the whole process of creating a data visualization on there right now, just because I realized that back in June and July, that I really lacked motivation. And so the Twitch stream was a way for me to hold myself accountable, to work on this project, no matter what.
Matthew:
Great. Can you give us any insight into what is coming next? What you're working on? What's in the pipeline?
Shirley:
Yeah. Yeah. So, like I mentioned earlier, I'm still trying to figure out how to regroup. I think I'm still little bit in the mourning phase of, there was a few clients I was talking to back in March that I was really excited about, and I'm now, months later, finally coming to the terms with the fact that it's probably not going to happen anymore because of the budget freezes. But certainly at the beginning, in March, I went and did a personal project and that took up maybe two months in my time of... and it was a personal project about how a pandemic might spread through a community. And once I did that, I went into kind of this, "I don't know what to do anymore now. I don't know how to spend my time." I've, I think, finally started to come out of that.
Shirley:
As of right now, I think I'm trying to keep it simple. I've been fortunate in that client requests are coming in again, they're not at the level of the scale or the excitingness of the scope as it was before, but thankfully, they're coming back in. So I'm just trying to kind of take... I'm trying really hard to just take the advantage of the fact that I don't have that many client projects right now and kind of redo my portfolio, try and get better at more new skills.
Shirley:
And one of the biggest things that I've been trying to learn is how to bring the work I do out into a physical space. So kind of physical computing, and it's been a dream of mine for a few years to do some sort of an installation. And so, kind of trying to take this time to explore more of different materials and different electronics and how I can incorporate the data and the projects that, the kind of projects I've always been doing in the screen and try and take it out to the three-dimensional world. So that is what I'm trying to get back to.
Matthew:
I can't wait to see what that looks like. Shirley, do you have any tips or suggestions for folks listening who might be curious about pursuing a career in the data visualization world? What would you say to them?
Shirley:
Yeah, first of all, welcome. I feel like it's a very welcome or it's a very exciting time right now, just because there's just so much data out there and we're all trying to make sense of it now. And so, I would say that because of the amount of interest, there's been organizations that have started, and the one that I refer to a lot is called Data Visualization Society. And I would say that they're a quite a good place to get started with because they have been putting a lot of effort into gathering resources for people that are early career or people that are trying to get into data visualization. So they have fireside chats about different visualization topics and they have a whole section dedicated to just career advice for getting into data visualization. So it's quite a good resource. So I think that would be a really great place to start.
Matthew:
Cool. And lastly, if people would like to follow along with your work online, how can they contact you? And are there any projects that you want to give a plug? Now's your chance, this is your platform.
Shirley:
Oh yeah. Yeah. So my portfolio website is sxywu.com. And I'm that same as a handle on Twitter, Twitch, where I'm streaming, Instagram, YouTube, all of those things. So that's my handle.
Shirley:
And I, actually, there's a project that I've been enjoying recently in the last few weeks, and enjoying it is a weird word, but I've been extremely appreciating, which is called One Anti-Racist Action A Day. I think maybe you can Google just that, but it is a newsletter, a daily newsletter. It's very short and it just says, "Today, this is the topic. Here's what's happening. Here's the action you can take, and this is why it matters." And it's been really, really, really helpful to stay informed with everything that's been going on in the US and in a very manageable... it doesn't take over my life, but it's something that I can do in the time that I'm checking my email every day.
Matthew:
Amazing. Shirley, thank you so much for your time, for all of your tips and your nuggets and advice. Keep doing beautiful work and we really appreciate it.
Shirley:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on, Matt. Thank you for finding me and for bringing me on.
Matthew:
Awesome. And that is it for this episode of the Sketchcast. Be sure to subscribe so that you can stay updated when the next episode goes live. And if you have any suggestions for guests that you would like me to interview on this show, please get in touch. You can find out our contact details in the show notes. Until next time, stay sketchy.
Shirley:
And then, we managed to get in. So we managed to not only get in, but we paid $40 for standing room only. So it's like all the way at the back of the theatre. So during the intermission, one of the ushers comes up to us. He's like, "Hey," so pointing to, it's orchestra, it's middle of orchestra, like all the way to the side. He's like, "Whoever is in those two seats have not shown up all of the first act. If, by the end of intermission, nobody has claimed those seats, you should just go sit down." So for the second half, we sat down in orchestra and it was amazing.
Matthew:
Wow.
Shirley:
Yeah. I cried so hard throughout most of the second act.
Matthew:
My partner and I went, my daughters stayed at home, and while we were there, there were tickets that were available. And so we definitely paid a lot more than $40, but we were sitting fourth row from the front. So we had amazing seats for the whole show as well. And I guess I knew that I would be able to go and see it. It was just a question of whether I was prepared to spend half of my life savings to buy a ticket to justify it. And then-
Shirley:
I wasn't going to say this in the middle, but your daughter didn't get to see it.
Matthew:
I thought she would be excited when I called her from the lineup, saying, "Guess what I'm going to see?" Apparently, she was really pissed off at me.
Shirley:
If I was the one that introduced you and then you were like, "Guess what I'm going to go do what you can't do?" I'd be like, "What?"
Matthew:
I promised her I'd take her to see it in Sydney next year. So she's got that to look forward to.
Shirley:
Just from an artistic standpoint of how everything, every one of those work together, but kind of like, you must have felt it, when you were in the room, in the theatre, the pure energy of not only the cast on stage, but the audience that's just so excited to be there. I feel like there was clapping after every song, standing ovation after, the energy in the room is amazing.
Matthew:
Absolutely. Absolutely. We got sidetracked there ...

At Sketch Group we’ve found the Empathy Forecast activity to be useful for years—it forms the foundation of all our sketch videos. It’s an easy group activity to run, and delivers valuable insights and targeted, useful language to use in website copy, presentations, sales material, or video call-to-action.

It’s also a wonderful way of getting clients, stakeholders, and team members collaborating, contributing, and thinking about a product or service from the target audience's perspective.

While the empathy map activity was originally developed by Dave Gray from XPLANE, the process of forecasting lets us capture a snapshot of where your target audience is at before a project, and then encourages the group to envision what is possible afterwards. Participants are then encouraged to find language that will bridge the gap between states, and bring about the desired change or impact.

In this way, you can explicitly encourage the group to ponder the potential for what is necessary to make your project a roaring success.

Here are the steps to follow when facilitating an Empathy Forecast activity of your own, which can be done either in-person, or online using collaboration software like Mural or Miro.

• Step 1. Run an empathy map for the Before state.
  
  We use the following diagram for participants to fill in, using markers and sticky notes. It helps to get specific about your target audience—for example, you could ask the group if they have an actual person in mind, and then caricature that person for the activity, like we've done here with "Wendy"! Once you have a particular person in mind, start brainstorming together what you imagine they might be thinking, feeling, hearing, saying, doing and seeing.

​That’s it! Once you’ve connected each Before and After section, photograph the completed Empathy Forecast, and share the images with participants after the meeting. There may be quite a lot of detail, so be sure to include close-ups of each section.

While this is no substitute for real data on how and what your target audiences think, feel, see, say, hear and do, an Empathy Forecast is a powerful tool for:
​

• creating targeted messaging and key phrases that are more likely to resonate with your target audience
• creating buy-in amongst clients and stakeholders
• narrowing the scope of a project
• giving your group or team the opportunity to participate in something that is fun and creative
• building empathy amongst participants for the target audience

The empathy forecast really is a powerful tool, regardless of the type of communication problem you're trying to solve, the industry you're in, or the audience you're trying to reach. 

If you found this article useful and would like to learn how to run an Empathy Forecast in an online setting, be sure to sign up to our free online workshop, where we'll show you step by step how to run this workshop using remote tools. It's fun, free, and is guaranteed to transform your communication projects for the better. 

In the movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio is swept into a world-within-worlds that results in a convoluted storyline something akin to Alice in Wonderland meets The Matrix.

Last week I had my own Inception moment, when I had the good fortune to take visual notes at a conference all about VR (virtual reality) ... using, of course, a VR headset.

The Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN) is a global community of educators who are pushing the boundaries of how XR (eXtended Reality, which is becoming the accepted umbrella term for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality technologies) is shaping the field of education. The iLRN 2020 is the annual online conference for this community, and it seemed only fitting that conversations about VR should be captured using VR.

Using my favourite sketching tool, Tilt Brush, I was engaged to capture some of the bigger group conversations that happened during the somewhat audaciously titled "Grand Challenges." As if the technology setup of live streaming my visual notes to YouTube as they were being created, and then funneling that feed back into the virtual world in which the conversation was happening wasn't ambitious enough, the topics that the group tackled were equally ambitious:

• tackling systemic racism
• fighting climate change
• curbing the spread of infectious diseases, and
• bridging the digital divide.

I'm pleased to say that the technology held up, and the end result was definitely a hit with attendees. Participants commented that seeing their conversation visualised into 3D scenes injected excitement and optimism into the group. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out in the end!

A huge congratulations to Mark, Jonathon, and the rest of the iLRN team and associated volunteers for successfully running what they envisioned to be "the Woodstock of conferences"; I was very grateful to be a part of the event.

You can explore all four virtual scenes from the iLRN 2020 conference on Google Poly using a VR headset (or you can just view them in your web browser) by following the links below.

• iLRN 2020 Grand Challenge I: Combating Systemic Racism
• iLRN 2020 Grand Challenge II: Curbing the Spread of Infectious Diseases
• iLRN 2020 Grand Challenge III: Fighting Climate Change
• iLRN 2020 Grand Challenge IV: Bridging the Digital Divide

I also created some walkthrough videos, like the one below. Enjoy!

We learned last week that the Defining Moments in Australia's History video series that we created for the National Museum of Australia has won a silver Telly Award.

The Telly Awards have been running for 41 years, annually showcasing the best work created within television and across video, for all screens. This year they received over 12,000 entries from 5 continents, and entries included work from some of the most respected advertising agencies, television stations, production companies and publishers around the world.

​We're delighted to be among such prestigious company, and we're so proud of our team for the work they put into this series—we like to think of them as being a bit like the Australian version of Horrible Histories!
​
Check out all eight of the "Defining Moments" videos below, or explore all 100 defining moments at the National Museum's digital classroom.

I've been thinking about the role that sketching can play in the sales process for a while—not only for our own business but for our clients. We've been working with a client in the technology space for years, and consistently helping them stand out when delivering a pitch to a client. I thought I'd capture what it was that made what we do such a potent combination.
​
The following images are the result of those thoughts.

We've realised that sales is multi-sensory—well, it should be, anyway—particularly for folks in the software world, where a formal proposal may drag on for 12 months or more.
​
If your sales team can communicate with a prospect by harnessing all of the available senses, you can pique curiosity and drive interest in your offering. Tools like video, graphic recording, and clever use of print collateral can give your proposal a huge edge, no matter how engaging you believe you can be with a slide deck full of bullet points.

​

Of course, you don't need to speak to all of the senses—your prospect might feel a little distracted if they walked into your pitch and were hit with the smell of freshly baked bread—unless you're selling bread, that is. The point is that there are many ways to deliver a consistent message from multiple angles.

We believe that the services we offer, and our experience in sketching a range of industries, can go a long way to helping sales teams ace their delivery. 

Does this trigger any ideas for how you might be able to rethink your sales approach?

​I'm super excited to announce a new project that we've been working on here at Sketch Group: The Sketchcast.

The Sketchcast is a show that teaches you how to use sketching and visuals to be amazing. I talk to interesting people to hear how they are using sketching to change the world.

The first episode, my interview with Ben Crothers about Online Facilitation, is up now on YouTube:

Ben is designer, strategist, facilitator, author, and all-round great guy, and we have a fantastic discussion about how to facilitate groups online. We discuss, among other things:

• how you can use colour to help people to express themselves better
• how you can help people get up to speed on digital tools when they’ve never used them before, and
• Ben shares the specific tools that he’s using to do this kind of work

I know that lots of people like to listen to podcasts while driving or exercising (as audio only), so I've made an audio-only version available below (minus the visual notes and bloopers). Once we've published a few episodes, we'll be sure to add The Sketchcast to the various podcasting platforms, but hopefully the SoundCloud file below will suffice for now.

And because I know that consuming information in text format is sometimes more useful than in or audio or visual format, I've included a full transcript below.

I'm excited about the potential that this show has to help us further our cause here at Sketch Group—the belief that sketching can be transformational in people's lives.

Give the show a watch/listen/read and let me know what you think in the comments below. I also welcome suggestions for future guests!

Tools and websites mentioned in the show:

• Mural
• Miro
• Slido
• TriviaMaker
• Mentimeter
• Bright Pilots - Ben's visual facilitation business
• 50 Remote Friendly Icebreakers - Ben's new ebook/website

Visual notes of the interview:

Full transcript:
Matt:
Welcome Ben Crothers.
Ben:
G’day mate, how are you?
Matt:
I'm great. So it is May, 2020.
Ben:
It is.
Matt:
We are currently in stage three restrictions lockdown, as is much of the world. Which means we can't go to a pub, we can't eat out at restaurants, our kids are working from home instead of school. And lots of people have been impacted in a massive way. How are you faring, and what are you doing to stay sane in these crazy times?
Ben:
In these crazy, crazy times. Look, in some ways I feel I'm cheating a bit. This is an introvert's paradise, right? I just get to sit at home, I get to draw, I get to write. This is fantastic and I'm saving an absolute motza in public transport. And I'm also very fortunate to have a really nice house and a lovely backyard. I've got local shops, I've got a fantastic park nearby to go and kick the footy. So, in a lot of ways it's really, really nice. But you're right, there are crazy times. And I have been getting cabin fever a bit. I've got two kids and they've certainly been doing school at home.
Ben:
Thankfully, they're both in high school and they just stick to the regular timetable. So, it's nice that they've got that structure. That's nice for all of us and all of our sanities.
Matt:
Yeah.
Ben:
But honestly, I've just got to make sure that I make time to get out of the house, and go and kick a footy around, and go for a run, have a stretch. Because otherwise hours can go pass and I'm stuck at the same desk in yet another Zoom meeting. Yeah, that's the main thing.
Matt:
Yeah. I'm realising that I'm much more of an introvert than I thought I was. I think a lot of people might be surprised to hear that, because I'm known amongst friends as being quite outgoing and talkative and gregarious. And I'm a bit like you, I'm happily playing a lot of guitar, and doing a bit of drawing and reading and meditation and exercise in the gym in the shed, and I'm quite happy. But I'm conscious that not everyone can spend that time on their own and they need the social interactions and they're missing it.
Ben:
True.
Matt:
So, anyway, I'm glad that you're coping as well as can be expected. So, before there's a ton of stuff that I want to ask you, but for our listeners, can you tell us your story about how you got to where you are now?
Ben:
Yeah, sure. Well, my name is Ben Crothers and I'm primarily a designer, a strategist, and a facilitator. And I do like drawing a lot. I probably bleed dry-erase marker ink. I love being at the whiteboard. And I guess I've been in the digital game scene, so probably the mid-nineties. So, this is back when putting, "under construction," animated gif on some websites was the sensible thing to do. Can you believe it? That's what we all thought. This is back in the days of Netscape Navigator and Geo CDs. If you remember Geo CDs. And I know there were crazy, crazy days and that's how I first really got into digital.
Ben:
I had done some design prior to that in print design, but it was actually years that would go by before I would actually call myself a designer for some strange reason. I think I had a big inferiority complex about design. And funnily enough at the time I was also doing a lot of in-house training, like in different computer software applications and proprietary software. And so it was through classroom training that I think I actually started cutting my teeth as a facilitator.
Ben:
Just developing those skills as far as reading the room, setting up the scaffold so people could interact with each other and learn and really get something out of that session together. And through the years I've just done a mix of working at different agencies, and startups, and governments, and consultancies, and all sorts of clients and projects that have always involved facilitation in some way. And definitely a lot of design and these days I like to say, "I definitely design more with people rather than pixels." I'm often designing how people work, how teams are brought together, what are the work patterns that they use? And so designing that experience, meeting by meeting, workshop by workshop, that's a lot of what I'm into now.
Matt:
I think a lot of people might be surprised to hear you describe that background. You're the author of a handful of books that are largely about sketching. And I think a lot of people assume that you're an artist who has found their way to make your art a part of work. But it sounds like it's been a bit more the other way round. Is that fair?
Ben:
That's interesting. Yeah. I guess drawing, in general, has always been there. It's always been there. Even back when I was at high school, I had a bunch of mates, actually I don't think anyone knows this. I had a bunch of nerdy mates and of course we would deface every single textbook by drawing those little pictures in the corners of textbooks. And then you thumb in the corner to make animated pictures. I used to love that. We did that a lot. And I used to draw a lot of comics. I was moonlighting as a comic strip artist for a while as well. And when I got into design proper, because comic strips came so easily to me, I found myself storyboarding a lot. And whenever I wanted to explain a new idea, whenever I wanted to sort of show a new product or a new service in use, I would do a storyboard.
Ben:
And people would say, "Hey, wow, that's fantastic. I can now really see how this is coming to life." And I thought, "Oh, I'm onto something here." And then I was regularly storyboarding. I remember being at a conference, I think it was in 2009 and there was a bloke next to me who was sketchnoting because back then we didn't call it sketchnoting. I don't think we called it anything, but I looked at that and then a massive light went on in my head and I was talking to him.
Ben:
And from that point on from 2009 onwards, I thought, "Oh, this is a thing that I can do more regularly. It has more form, it has more structure." And from that point I started doing these sort of quick economical, explanatory kind of drawings in all of the workshops that I was running as well as in my notebook. And so yeah, that's a long way of saying drawing has always been there in some form or another.
Matt:
Yeah. Great. So, I want to talk to you today about online facilitation, primarily. Largely, because I know a lot of facilitators who have been thrown a curveball because they don't feel like they're digital natives or they can take the leap to the online world. And they don't know how to take their activities and the things that they're used to doing in the room, into an online environment. So, can you share with me your experiences and the tools that you use and how you manage that space?
Ben:
Yeah. And you're right, look, it is a really interesting space and it's something that we've been thrust into, which I think is an ultimately positive thing. And for me, it's been like design. I always think of facilitation the same as design in terms of mindset, skillset, and tool set. And no matter of what tool set you're using, there's always a mindset that has to come first. And as a facilitator, it's always this art and science of trying to make sure everyone is really clear on that outcome of the meeting, like what are we all there to do? And your job as a facilitator then is to shift that along, and to make sure that everyone kind of realizes, move by move, how to kind of go from step one all the way around up to the very end.
Ben:
Whether it's a big decision to be made, or a final idea to land on, or a unique value proposition, or a bunch of goals that then have to go into a project plan. Whatever it is, there's a structure that you have to realize you need in place for people to understand this kind of progression move by move. And the way you do that, that's where the skillset and tool set comes in. And yeah, you're right.
Ben:
As we're seeing, since we're all online now, the tool set is definitely much different. And for me, it breaks down into two big camps. There's the digital tools that mimic the real world, and I'm sure we'll get into talking more about tools, but there's those tools that act like a digital canvas with digital sticky notes. So, they're kind of aping the real world. That's great, but there's also the other side which is really trying to make use of the advantages that digital gives us. And by that I mean we can actually have more people in the room, not just what can physically be accommodated in a physical room, and things like that.
Matt:
Okay. Let's talk about some specifics. What are your favorite tools for each of those camps? What are you using at the moment?
Ben:
Yeah, definitely Mural and Miro, I tend to use Mural the most. Mural I think has been around for years and years now. It's a digital canvas. It's got loads and loads of different templates in it. It's great because you can certainly use a lot of digital stickies and have many, many people all logged in, moving stuff around together. But it also has some simple drawing tools, that for me, I find really practical to be able to draw up different patterns and canvases. And there's sort of basic visual patterns to help structure a conversation. So, it's really good at that kind of thing. Miro is great, I think it used to be called Realtime Board. I've got a bit of a thing because I'm a bit of an artist and I've done art education and I almost have a soft spot for a lot of artists.
Ben:
I've always really liked the artist Miro. And to me it kind of makes me cringe when there's software that's named after an artist. But anyway, that's a petty little thing. And that's probably why I use Mural more than Miro. That's great for I guess having a canvas to visually generate stuff and move stuff around. There's certainly group chat like Slack and Microsoft Teams, so everyone can be in on the conversation at the same time. I'm also a big fan lately of software that lets you do polls and quizzes. Stuff where you can check for understanding. Things like slido.com. Have you heard of Slido?
Matt:
Yes.
Ben:
Slido's great. Mentimeter. Just mentimeter.com, that's great. And because I've been getting more into energizers and icebreakers lately just to try to make meetings more entertaining or engaging, I've been getting into more online trivia applications and websites. There's a website called triviamaker.com. It's got loads and loads of trivia games on there and it's totally free, which is awesome. But you can also put in your own trivia games as well. That's TriviaMaker. Yeah, those are the few that come to mind.
Matt:
Right, and so is that what you're referring to when you say that these schools are not trying to replicate what you would normally do in the room, but they're trying to take it beyond what's possible?
Ben:
For me, all of those—apart from the quiz one—probably they're all really replicating what we would normally do in the room.
Matt:
Right. And so what else is there that's out there that can expand that?
Ben:
Good question. I think it really becomes, how you combine them. I think that's where the digital experience starts to really be enhanced. By that I mean you can start a raw plan, if you like, with a group of people. You can have a structured conversation in something like Mural where you can say, "Okay, where are we now?" And you look at your strengths and opportunities and weaknesses and then you have a discussion about where you want to be. And you may want to kind of draw a metaphor of a mountain or a bridge or something like that.
Ben:
And then when it's ready to go into the detail of how to get there, you can actually flip over to something like Trello and everyone can jump in and make a whole bunch of cards in the lists that Trello gives you. And that way they can even start assigning stuff to each other, or to people who aren't even in the room. And the whole time they can also be interacting through group chat. They can be uploading and downloading files in group chat as well. So, I think the real magic comes in combining different tools together.
Matt:
Gotcha. And this is all in parallel with video conferencing software like Zoom or Teams or whatever, right?
Ben:
Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. Actually, it's funny, I've noticed recently in Zoom they now have little reactions. There's a new reactions button that's popped up in Zoom. I don't know about yours, but at the moment mine just has a thumbs up and an applause emoji. And for a while now I've been using a deck of little cards and I've had a lot of success with those. And the cards themselves have things like emoji on them and definitely things like, "Yes, I agree." You know those times when you're in a meeting and there's this heated agreement going on? People saying. "Yes, preach! That's fantastic."
Ben:
And there's also the Elmo card, you know that one? E-L-M-O, enough, let's move on. That's a great card to wave. Of course, all of these things, you start to set up a bit of a social contract with. It's something that is good to have an agreement at the beginning to say, "Look, when we meet online, there's a whole lot of non-verbal communication that we miss out on because we're not physically in the room." It's harder to pick up on all those non-verbal cues. And so having a cute little set of cards that you can flash out with different messages helps that and …
Matt:
Are you saying that having applause and thumbs up is limiting our ability to express ourselves?
Ben:
Well, I guess it's a start. Yeah, and I dare say the hit prediction is that there's going to be more reactions that come up in that little menu. There's going to be other software as well, but those are obviously two common ones that Zoom have put in. But I reckon there's going to be more to come. Yeah.
Matt:
It begs the question that adding more to tools can make them harder to use and there's already a barrier to entry for people that aren't as comfortable operating online. How do you go about getting people up to speed with tools like Mural if they've never used it before? Getting their head around the different options for, like, we had some technical difficulties getting our audio working before we started chatting today …
Ben:
We did.
Matt:
And both you and I have an IT background, right? So, how do we get people without that background up to speed? How do you tackle that?
Ben:
That's a really important question, actually. A couple of ways spring to mind. One I suppose is trying to help people prepare beforehand. By that I mean I might send a link out to a Mural canvas within an email or something in a group chat that says, "Hey, please get acquainted with Mural," or whatever it is, before the actual meeting, before the workshop. Because you'll probably need to create a user account first. You'll want to move a few things around, play with panning around the canvas, zooming in and out. I think panning and zooming are two things that people get stuck on. So, there's that.
But people being people, we're all busy. Often we get to a session and we haven't done any of the preparation. And as a facilitator then you have to make sure that everyone has time to get acquainted.
Ben:
And one way I've found to be able to do that and it kind of kill several birds with one stone here. The very first activity I do is just ask a simple question like, "What's one main thing you want to get out of this session?" Or "What's one skill that you have that you really want to bring to bear today?" Or some kind of question that helps to oil up people's brains. And then I'll say, "Right, pick a spot on the canvas." And here's where I've prefabricated some text boxes and some stickies and I'll say "Pick a spot and double click on the text box and write in there the answer to that question." Or, "You might want to create a new sticky note. Use the menu on the side," things like that and then, "Put your answer onto the canvas." And so it's just a way for them to ease into using the canvas.
Matt:
It's like the tutorial at the start of a video game.
Ben:
Haha, yes. I've never thought about it that way. Yeah, that's right. It's like that Level One. It's super, super easy. And you get that, "Ping, Tada. Here's your first badge," you unlock the first thing. Yeah. It's exactly like that.
Matt:
Yeah, nice. So, how do you think that the availability of these online tools has shaped your style of facilitation?
Ben:
Gosh, that's a good one. The availability. Well, I think in some ways I might've been a bit spoiled because for a lot of years I was working at an Australian software company called Atlassian. And like a lot of software companies, like a lot of companies maybe, we were very used to remote meetings, online meetings. We're very used to, at least one person or a couple of people having to video conference in while the rest of us were in the room. It was always a bit of a hybrid. And because of that we always had to compensate—and I use that word with meaning—we had to compensate for having some people online and some people offline, like some people IRL, in real life. And what that meant was we had a mix of stuff on a whiteboard and stuff in Mural or Miro or stuff in Trello. And we were doing awkward things, like having to take photos of what was on a whiteboard and someone would take that from their phone and post it into the Slack channel and it was all very cumbersome.
Ben:
And then there was this massive watershed moment—there was this collective, "Aha," that went throughout Atlassian—this was a while ago now—to say, "Look, it's really a substandard experience for someone who's videoconferencing in, trying to be a hundred percent involved with a bunch of people who are physically in a room." And it was quite interesting, it all happened at once very quickly, where everyone said, "Okay, if one person is videoconferencing in, we all videoconference in." And suddenly it wasn't about compensating anymore. We had to make it work online. And once we had that force constraint that made us embrace the tools that were around at the time. I remember years ago, mate, years ago. I think you as well, maybe. I've been a coder from way back, when you've been in the digital game for as long as us, you have to do everything.
Ben:
You had to design it all, code it all front-end, back-end, you name it. And I remember years ago I actually coded up my own application to do digital sticky notes. And I thought it was great! I thought this thing was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And I thought I was really onto something. I'm going to make real, digital sticky notes around and you could type in them, and then you had to sort of click a button and it would commit it to the database and you could drag it around.
Ben:
Back then I thought that was fantastic, but looking back I can see it was just so cumbersome. It didn't have that really light, fluid touch that you need for something like that to actually be practical. So, that's why I didn't end up using it for very long. But it's really shown me how the digital tools have really had to accelerate. How well they have to be used. How practical they have to be, how fast they have to be. Yeah.
Matt:
Absolutely. As a former programmer who has worked with JavaScript, I can't imagine the kinds of performance and interaction design challenges that the Mural team have had to solve to get that thing working like it does in the browser. I take my hat off, it's massively impressive.
Ben:
Absolutely.
Matt:
So on this podcast we like to talk about visuals. And so how does, as a fellow visual thinker and someone who loves to express himself visually and teach others how to do the same, how do you bring visuals into your online facilitation moments?
Ben:
Yeah, great question. One really easy way, I guess, is drawing on my iPad and using Zoom at the same time. So, rather than just sharing what's on my laptop screen, through the magic of Zoom and that lovely green share screen button you can actually choose to share an iPad screen via Airplay, I think it is. And so that way while I'm having a conversation, I can be drawing and everyone can see what I'm drawing. So, that's as close as I can get to that fluid whiteboarding experience. Now the downside of that is it's just me with the pen. There's no one else with a pen. So, certainly for smaller meetings where it's really about briefing and information-gathering and kicking around a problem, things like that, that works really nicely. I'm a big fan of that. Otherwise, I guess I'm really reaching for things like Mural where everyone has the pen in a way. Everyone can be contributing into that same canvas space. So that's been a huge win for me.
Ben:
Actually, just a quick little story. I remember running a brand exploration workshop for a startup recently. And I had my lovely kind of structured set of templates and we moved through those and they had a wonderful time. It was really good, it was really productive, but the real magic came afterwards. They ended up inviting a couple more people into that canvas. And because they had already filled it all out, it had organized all the right information that, up until then, had been just scattered in different places in the organization and just hidden in different people's brains. And there it all was, all lovely and laid out in a really visual map in this canvas in Mural. And then we had a designer and a content writer just coming of their own volition and add their own stuff and sought out some photos and a mood board, and it just took on a life of its own.
Ben:
And the guy rang me and he said, "Look, you're not going to believe this. I thought that canvas was great before. You should see it now." And they've really made it into something else, something far more creative and practical for them. So, I thought that was cool.
Matt:
Amazing.
Ben:
Yeah.
Matt:
And we were talking a little bit earlier about how people can use visuals to express themselves. Do you want to talk a little bit about the role of visuals in online meetings and how it can help kind of address some of those non-verbal cues?
Ben:
Yeah, good one. Definitely get used to using some kind of icebreaker or energiser—something that's visual. If you're using Zoom, when you share a screen, there's an option there to choose whiteboard. And everyone can draw at the same time. And a lovely little creative starter to a meeting is developing a random visual story. And the way it goes is the first person, it can be you or a facilitator, you make a one small part of a drawing, doesn't even have to be much. And then you throw it to someone else and then they add to that drawing. And then you go around the whole group, and before you know it you've got this bizarre drawing and everyone has a laugh. And as a facilitator then you can sort of call out, "Hey, look at how creative we were. Look how we built on each other's ideas." That's a lovely way to kind of ease people into a creative mindset. That's a nice one.
Ben:
And also anything that gets them using colour I find is really good. Sometimes, I don't know about you, Matt, but sometimes as a facilitator I have to kind of help people navigate difficult discussions. There's elephants in the room that have to come out. There's difficult topics that need to be talked about, or maybe really tough decisions where maybe not everyone agrees. And it's good to look for opportunities where people can speak in colour. By that I mean, "Are you green, are you amber, are you red? Pick a colour. Go." And it's just a very easy way for people to start expressing themselves where maybe they were struggling with words. And of course it's a great democratizer as well. It doesn't matter whether you're the highest paid voice in the room, or someone from the mail room, it doesn't matter. You get your say the same way as everyone else. So if any-
Matt:
Just going back—are you asking people to draw a colour or are you asking them to just say a word? The name of the colour.
Ben:
Oh sorry. Yeah, a good point. It can be with digital stickies if you're using or have a digital canvas where you might say, "Hey, let's rate the health of our team when it comes to, I don't know, decision-making." Or keeping on time or whatever it is. "What do you think? Are we green, are we amber or are we red?" And then very quickly you get a bit of a heat map of how people think the team is.
Matt:
Nice.
Ben:
But hey, you don't even need digital stickies. Non-verbal communication is also using your hands and thumbs. Thumb up can be “yes”, or “plus one.” Thumb on the side can be “zero”, or “I'm not sure.” Thumb down: “no”, and so on. Even things like that as a quick check-in can be really powerful.
Matt:
I love it. And do you have any kind of favourite moment from online facilitation or a favourite story that you want to share?
Ben:
Well, I have to say the one about the brand strategy workshop certainly springs to mind.
Matt:
Yeah.
Ben:
I love that because the group of people who were in the workshop ended up taking what they co-created even further by bringing in other people that I didn't even know about. And so I think there's great beauty in that. As a facilitator setting up a space, setting up some kind of structure for people to then fill in the way they want to, rather than just a blank canvas physically, digitally or metaphorically. So, it's lovely to do that, but then when you see them take that even further, that's really magic.
Matt:
Awesome. Ben, you're a superstar. Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you sharing everything that you've learned about this new way of working that lots of people are kind of coming to grips with. Here's a chance to give a plug for whatever it is that you would like to plug. And you mentioned something about icebreakers earlier. It sounds like you've got quite a collection of icebreakers that you use.
Ben:
I certainly have, Matt. Yes, I've just dropped my latest eBook, it's called 50 Remote-Friendly Icebreakers. And that's actually part of my new visual facilitation business called Bright Pilots. Bright Pilots is all about essentially growing the facilitation skills in anyone and everyone because let's face it, we all hire smart people where we work. And we all work with smart people and, Matt, you're pretty smart yourself.
Matt:
Ah, thanks mate!
Ben:
And I'm sure you work with smart people. And oftentimes I find there are so many people who are trying to solve problems that have already being solved. And that's where facilitators and coaches can really help. Just to help people connect the dots, help people have a better conversation. Facilitators are great at doing that, and that's what Bright Pilots is all about, myself and a network of facilitators I work with.
Ben:
We help people have better conversations, we help them frame problems better, solve problems better, come up with better solutions. And because we are all online at the moment and we're all turning into zombies. I thought to myself, "Well what can we do to make all of these online meetings less sucky?" And I thought, "Well that's what icebreakers and energizes and all that are great for." So, that's why I wrote 50 Remote-Friendly Icebreakers. And so you can find that at brightpilots.com/icebreakers. Is that okay? Can I say that?
Matt:
Please.
Ben:
Brilliant, brightpilots.com/icebreakers. And it's a companion website as well as an eBook. I think at the moment there's about 70 icebreakers on there and growing, but the eBook has 50. And there's all sorts of great games and quick conversation starters in there. And I guarantee you that there are no cheesy ones. I don't like the cheesy ones. No one likes the cheesy ones. I didn't put those in there.
Matt:
I'm more than happy for you to plug that because I did buy a copy and I've had a look and it's an amazing resource—I take my hat off—and every single icebreaker on the list is beautifully hand-illustrated. They look incredible. You've done a fantastic job, so congratulations on launching that.
Ben:
Oh, magic. Thank you. Thanks so much.
Matt:
Pleasure. Ben, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
Ben:
Thank you so much for having me on. This has been a whole lot of fun. Thanks, man.
Matt:
Awesome.

Congratulations!

That big conference (or workshop, or virtual meeting) that you organised is finally over, and it was a raging success. All the hard work and late nights you put in have paid off, and you're being inundated with praise from attendees. Hooray! You even hired a graphic recorder to sketch the event in real-time (either in person or remotely via videoconference), so now you have a colourful visual summary of the content (something the attendees also said they loved!)

Great ... so what are you going to do with it? It looks pretty, captures all the key points, and you paid for it—so don't bury it in a folder on your hard drive! You might as well use it for something.

Here are seven creative ideas for how you can get the most out of your visual summary once your graphic recorder has sent it through to you:

1. Post it to social media.

Unless there are confidentiality restrictions, it seems kind of obvious that you would share your visual summary on social media. But what's the best way to actually do this? If the canvas is large, it can be difficult for someone to view on their phone as the text will appear quite small, and won't be particularly legible.

You have a few options:

2. Use it in an ebook, article, brochure, or report.

If you work in communications in any capacity, chances are you work across a number of mediums. Your visual summary can be repurposed in just about all of them! For example:

• Release transcripts of the presentations or interviews from your event as blog posts or articles, with the visual summary from that part of the day as a hero image.
• Write an ebook capturing some of the key takeaways from the event, and include the visual summary (or various cut-down images from the larger canvas) to break the text up.
• Embed cut-down images from the visual canvas in a brochure or report that you write as part of the event—let's be honest, people will spend more time looking at the pictures than reading the words anyway!

3. Use it in a PowerPoint, Prezi, or presentation.

The next time you give your presentation, why not mix up your slides to keep things fresh? Audiences don't want to be bored to death by bullet points, and good images can be hard to find. It may be that the image your graphic recorder created fits the bill nicely!

4. Print it out and frame it.

If your event was captured on a large sheet of paper, there's a small possibility that you have the original canvas hanging up in the office somewhere as a reminder of what a great day it was. Most people, however, don't have room in their house or office for artwork that is 2.5 metres wide.

However, your graphic recorder will probably have given you a digital copy, which means you can print it out at whatever size you like. If the visual summary is something you find particularly pleasing to the eye, why not frame it and hang it on the wall for everyone to enjoy?

5. Create custom marketing collateral.

Once you have an image that you love, you can print it on just about anything! We've helped clients create dust jackets for notebooks, post cards ... one of my clients even used a sketch of mine as the logo for home-made chilli jam (with permission, of course!)

The point is: there are a ton of ways that you can weave the images from your visual summary into your marketing. Digital printing means that you can put images on almost any product. So whether it's an internal campaign or part of your wider customer brand, the options are only limited by your imagination.

​6. Turn it into an infographic.

Sometimes your visual summary does a good job of capturing the conversation that your group had on the day, but the images that will be most useful need some more thought and polish. That's OK! A visual summary is not meant to be used as a considered piece of communication, but it can be an incredibly useful input into creating that artefact. It may be half of the way there, and just need a few tweaks! Working with a designer or illustrator, your visual summary will be the perfect launchpad for this project.

​7. Gift it to your speakers.

If you're an event organiser, you know that looking after your speakers is hugely important. You've gone to great lengths to arrange flowers, movie tickets, perhaps even spoiled them with flights and fancy accommodation. Why not go the extra mile and give them the most unique, relevant gift of all—a sketch of their talk that was created in real-time and perfectly captures the moment?

Harness the long tail

As you can see, there is more to having a graphic recorder capture your event than the novelty of visualising content in real-time (although, we'll concede, it's a pretty darn cool party trick). There is a "long tail" of marketing and goodwill for which your image can be useful. You've invested in these images, so you might as well capitalise on them.
​We hope you've found these ideas useful. If you've repurposed a visual summary in a creative way, I'd love to hear from you!

Hello to our wonderful clients and friends. I wanted to check in on you to see how you were faring in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. I've had multiple conversations over the past week with many of you, and I know that things seem pretty bleak in all sectors, but especially for those of us whose livelihoods are tied to running events of any kind.

I received a text message this morning from a fellow business owner whose company has had to cancel all of the events that they had planned over the next two months (their entire income for that period), plus he let five staff go this morning. 

The impact is unprecedented. But we're refusing to let this dampen our spirits! So I wanted to reach out and share some positive vibes as well as a resource that you might find helpful.

Firstly, I wanted to say that we're here for you. If you’re struggling, please reach out, by phone or via email. If there’s absolutely anything we can do to help. It could be:

• guidance on how to respond to what’s going on
• advice on moving your event online
• anything business or communications related. Or you're just feeling overwhelmed and want to chat. We’re here to help.

The resource I wanted to share is from a good friend and mentor of mine, Mark Dobson. It’s a video series on how to be more productive when working at home. Mark’s been a huge help with my business over the past few years. He really knows his stuff and is a total class act. He’s made these videos completely free in response to the fact that so many people are having to transition to working from home.

• The Micro Library: Skills of Working from Home

​They’re short videos—around 6 minutes—so not a massive time investment but there are some really good tips in there, so I encourage you to check them out.

​I actually took the first video from this series and created a sketchnote of it. I may create sketchnotes of the rest of his videos if people find them useful. 

That’s it. Be safe, and stay positive. These are challenging times, but business and communications are challenging at the best of times. You can do this! Take care of yourself and your family.

As the novel coronavirus brings the world to its knees, we're seeing many of our clients be impacted. It seems no industry is immune, but the events industry in particular is suffering—conferences, workshops, and other large gatherings of people are being forced to cancel, which is devastating for event organisers, speakers, and attendees. Perhaps it's affected your company as well? 

If you're planning an event and it's looking like you may be forced to cancel, you may want to consider hosting a virtual event instead. Tools like Zoom and WebEx have made videoconferencing much more affordable and accessible than it used to be, and there are plenty of steps you can take to ensure your virtual event is successful (see 8 Tips To Host Live Online Training Events).

There's one more tip that I'd like to suggest: engage a remote scribe.

Remote scribing works much the same as having a graphic recorder there in the room—we'll live sketch the conversation as we hear it, using an iPad or similar device, which can be projected in the room (if you have any local attendees) or shared in real time with virtual attendees.

The same benefits apply as if your graphic recorder was on site—real-time visuals spark new ideas, attendees are more engaged, and you're left with a colourful, rich record of the conversation. But it can happen from anywhere! As long as you have an internet connection, there's no reason why your event can't continue as planned, with attendees located across the country, or around the world.

If you'd like to hear more about how remote scribing can help make your virtual event a success, whether it's for an entire day, or just a one-hour meeting, shoot us an email or call us on 1300 SKETCH.

I recently signed an agreement with Saxton Speakers to have them represent me as my agent in speaking and sketching engagements. Having an agent means that the work that my team and I do can be promoted to a wider audience—and it opens up opportunities that may not have come about otherwise.

Our first engagement was the launch of Saxton Live at the Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Event (AIME) conference: a three-day extravaganza showcasing the best of the events industry—speakers, entertainers, and more. Being part of the event also meant I had the good fortune to meet (and sketch) some incredibly inspiring speakers, including Australian rock royalty, Kate Ceberano!

The presentations were all 10 minutes each, and were delivered back to back with no downtime. I've sketched TEDx events in the past, so I'm familiar with capturing this fast-paced format of talk, and did some preparation in advance so that I was ready to "drink from the firehose."

I'm honoured to be on the Saxton books with such a high calibre collection of speakers and performers. If you're organising an event (including a virtual conference) and looking for a professional speaker, definitely take a look through the impressive Saxton roster.