In 2013 Tom Wujec gave the TED talk, “Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast.
It’s a great question. After all, we all know how to make toast, right? Don’t we?
I mean, we have OUR way for making toast. . . and we assume that everyone else makes toast the same way we do: the right way, of course!
Except that we ALL have our own ways of making toast, and we all assume that OUR way is the way everyone else does it. (Or else they’re weird!)
Drawing out how we do a thing allows us to make our thinking visible to ourselves and others. It exposes the gaps in our understanding and allows us to literally work from the same page from the start.
Hearing Tom talk about toast gets you thinking about it. But the Jam makes it personal. Well, the Graphic Jam, that is!
Graphic Jam
What’s a Graphic Jam? This is when a group of folks get together and speed-draw different words called out to them. You only get a couple of seconds to draw an image to represent your word before the next word is called, and you don’t know what the words are going to be in advance. The point is to have fun and play with drawing out different ideas. It’s also an activity that seems to go exceptionally well with alcohol as they get more relaxed about their ability to draw.
Speaking of alcohol, I did a Graphic Jam with some UX folks a while ago during one of their UX Speakeasy Meetups at a local brewery. For them, though, this was more than a fun exercise in drawing: it became a major insight experience in assumptions around industry communication.
We started off drawing our versions of “toast”: draw me a person, a tree, a house, a banana, a beer.
Interestingly enough, people’s drawings looked very similar for all of these things. (Except the beer. Some preferred their beer in bottles, while others preferred their beer in steins.)
Great! We could all agree that we are generally thinking about the same things when we talk about these basic objects.
But what about when we explored the UX industry’s terms through simple drawings? That’s when things got interesting. We had seventy people in a room drawing what they mean when they think of “user experience,” and we ended up with seventy different drawings! It wasn’t until we moved from drawing as individuals to drawing in groups that we began to see agreement in what these industry terms meant and people drew images that were as similar as the people, trees, and houses of the first round of drawing.
All the nooks and crannies. . .
The Graphic Jam allows us to explore the gaps in our own communication and understanding – all the nooks and crannies hiding our assumptions and meaning. It also reinforces the importance of drawing out ideas together so we may literally be on the same page during our conversations.
Drawing out ideas together – visual conversations – really is the collaborative visualization Tom talks about in his video.
What Tom doesn’t really talk about in this video is what these visual conversations do to – and for – US.
When faced with a really wicked problem, with a conversation that matters, we don’t want to waste our time or efforts. We want to contribute, we want to work well together, we want to be seen and heard, and we want to know that our contribution has meant something for making progress towards the larger solution.
Contributing. Valued. Seen and heard. Making a difference and impact.
How many times do you get to experience this during your day?
When it really matters, how many meetings and conversations leave you feeling a little dry, burnt or crumbling? (Thinking of toast here.) Leave you wondering why the meeting was called in the first place, or why the Grand Poo Bah is asking for people’s input when you know he’s just going to do what he wants anyway. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. And while I can scrape the burnt parts off of me, I’ll still feel raw, tender and a wee bit resentful afterwards from all the scraping.
. . . for holding all the butter!
When we pick up the pen and draw forth visual conversations with each other, we are feeding ourselves and each other with the yummy goodness that doing something meaningful brings. We get to feel all toasty warm inside and proud of what we’re doing. . . together!
If we’ve got the toast and then jam, then visual conversation is the butter that takes our toast to a whole other level.
It feels GOOD to communicate well, to know that we’ve been seen and heard with what we have to contribute to the conversation or project.
Help others feel that toasty goodness by inviting them to draw forth a visual conversation with you.
You may find that a visual conversation with your team could be the best thing since sliced bread!
I cannot wait to see what you draw forth,
p.s. To try Tom’s toast-drawing exercise for yourself, visit drawtoast.com!
