Thumbnail Sketching
Conveying your ideas with pictures
When generating a list of solutions and ideas for improvement, it may be helpful to challenge the team to draw their ideas.
The act of sketching ideas as pictures is a basic and visual way to convey them. Creating sketches is a low-fidelity way of documenting improvement ideas during the Ideation and Prototyping stages of Design.
Although sketching requires little effort, it can cause some anxiety among team members who do not see themselves as being “artistic” or “creative”. It is essential to remind the team that the sketches are meant to be basic and rudimentary. The team must understand that even the simplest and crudest of drawings can help them convey their ideas.
In the book, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, author Jake Knapp and his collaborators provide a tremendously valuable 4-step process for sketching, described below.
Step 1: Take Notes
Step 2: Sketch
Step 3: Crazy 8s
Step 4: Solution Sketch
Download the Free "Sketching" Template (PDF)
Purchase the template to customize for your own organization
All of our tools and templates are available in Word or PowerPoint format to allow organizations to purchase and customize the templates to their brand standards.
Applying creative thinking and sharing ideas using pictures is a core concept of design thinking. To learn more about design, please visit our Introduction to Design Thinking Course.
This course will help expose the learner to various design thinking tools and mental models – all with the emphasis on innovating through creative problem-solving.
Our objective is to provide the learner with practical tools for applying a versatile 3-step design thinking process within their organizations. Through this framework, the learner will be able to reframe problems from the customer’s perspective. With this perspective in mind, the learner will drive improvements around the customer experience using tools such as deep-dive interview, journey mapping, empathy mapping, and rapid prototyping.
Need help encouraging teams to use sketching to convey their ideas?
Schedule a 30 minute coach call today and let’s talk through the details.
Never Miss an Improvement Nerds Episode
Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest articles, tools, templates, podcasts, and improvement tips. All delivered right to your inbox!
Let’s nerd out!