Metaphors and murals: ideas for engaging digital workshops
As online collaboration tools like Mural and Miro are adopted with increasing velocity, our comfort level with these platforms and the reality of continued remote work begs the question “what’s next?”
I ponder this question as a facilitator, concerned with tapping into the phenomenal potential of every individual and the drive for connecting through co-creation, being relevant and making meaning.
Bigger than a work project
The organic flow and energy of people coming together to solve a challenge is a marvellous thing. And in my most memorable pre-COVID interactions, that flow often had a bigger story running through it.
In one project just over a year ago, a crew prepared for a journey across rough seas to a distant shore. An ocean-ready boat and a clear map to their destination were needed. In reality the technology team in this project was up against a deadline to stabilise critical systems and faced a series of complex decisions before they could move forward.
In another project, I worked with a team of would-be astronauts who shared their ambition. They talked of a moonshot, and needing a big plan to get there. The industry was actually banking, and the challenge was to work out the market gap and prioritise their workstreams.
Then there was the challenge a group faced in creating the optimal design of of each room in a house. The house’s structure, plumbing and electricity were fixed, and there were competing needs and requirements for the internal theme and the various rooms. In reality, the team was working out how to translate a global directive to local needs. The house structure helped integrate two levels of strategy — global and local.
Or there was the time a restaurant team wanted to understand the tastes and appetite of diners they had never cooked for before, then design a menu and try new recipes. In truth, this team was challenging the norms in their industry, exploring how they might overcome blockers like policy and regulation to serve an audience that had been previously been under-served.
The Hero’s Journey, thinking in pictures
What these projects have in common is the weaving of a theme and symbols that transcend time and culture. They each had elements of the hero’s journey — the team sets out, faces challenges, overcomes them, and moves towards to the goal. The hero is the team!
The themes and symbols embedded in these workshops helped make the experience of co-creation more engaging and the outcome more memorable. The mental images stayed with us, a brief reference such as “the new recipes” or “what it’s like in the rocket on the way to the moon” immediately conjured visual imagery, helping us think in pictures.
The team sets out, faces challenges, overcomes them, and moves towards to the goal. The hero is the team.
More than tasks and post-its
Colourful post-its catch my eye as I scan across the array of digital canvases I’ve created or contributed to in Mural, and more recently, in Miro. Mostly the post-its appear on white backgrounds with orderly structures. Yes, the task is ticked off, the template is completed. But as I look across the canvases, what jumps out both visually and in my memory, are the projects that carried a theme.
I truly enjoy the process of my work and the architecture of workshop-based interactions. I like to experiment, to see how I can upshift and how workshop design can enable better experiences and outcomes.
In recent remote workshops, I tried a new approach. Those same themes that worked in pre-COVID live workshops made an appearance in Mural and Miro. The backdrop was a landscape and all the activities of the workshop were experienced within that landscape.
The shift from theming in a physical space to a virtual space required thinking about what would translate easily, what type of imagery to use, as well as specifics like layouts, navigation and staged reveals of the landscape. Yes, it definitely took more planning and effort than using one of the standard canvases, but it was worth it!
Perhaps it is unnecessary for every digital collaboration. However theming can be the x-factor that truly engages everyone and makes it more memorable.
Once you get started, it can be surprising how the metaphor can quickly evolve in all sorts of unexpected and fascinating directions.
In one online workshop, the nautical theme extended to artefacts that reminded the participants of the decisions made together, with the boat’s anchor and the discoveries at the bottom of the ocean taking on particular, recurring meaning. In another workshop, the idea of each team member’s “secret sauce” rose to prominence, turning differences into strengths.
The benefits of theming often run deeper. Participants have shared that the theme woven into a workshop provoked them to see a situation differently and helped shift thinking in ways that linear, directly focused tasks would not have. Connections and relationships between elements have been found that may have been missed without the metaphorical layer at play.
The other advantage of theming with a visual representation, is that it can be a forcing mechanism to get the whole story into one page, translating to immediate artefact generation. We need more visual one-pagers and fewer powerpoint decks in our world of information overload!
Endless possibilities
The potential for themes to introduce energy to business topics and learning contexts in online experiences is boundless. It’s worth shortlisting some potential themes to draw from, which will speed up the whole process of preparation.
I have a go-to list of themes, which lend themselves to some common challenges and anticipated artefacts. A handful of “tried and true” themes (landscapes) that I would use in a pinch are:
- Launching the rocket: Identifying the goal, and the work to get there
- Cooking in the kitchen: Creating new recipes / new ways of doing things
- Boating in the ocean: Identifying the goal, obstacles, and aides along the way
- Designing the house: Balancing different needs, strategies or approaches at the same time
These landscape images are available for download by clicking here.
Tips for theming digital collaboration
Theming can be used for a wide variety of situations and challenges. Here are some things to consider:
- Theming with a hero’s journey format helps when there are multiple consecutive stages of co-creation and/or experience involved. Think about the output of each stage and how aspects of the theme can be melded with each stage.
- Theming with simple metaphors may be appropriate for shorter interactions, for example steps of a process being represented as stairs or rungs of a ladder.
- Keeping in mind the audience and the situation is important when selecting a theme. Some themes and scenarios will be broadly relevant whilst others may alienate. Sports and military themes are commonly used, and potentially over-used. If in doubt, test it out first.
- Find a way to bring every participant into the landscape. It could be that each person has an avatar, a special coloured post it, or their name on a key element within the landscape.
- Depending on the depth and effort required in each stage, it may help to have different canvases that build up to the complete themed canvas. If rounds of divergent and convergent thinking are required, this can be done outside the main thematic visual with converged components then brought into the landscape.
- Reconsider theming at all, if there is a risk that it will trivialize the topic or cause offence in any way.
Not quite there yet…?
As I write this piece, my kids are gaming on their devices beside me. The applications they are using to learn and play are colorful, fluid, and changing every day. They’re jumping between worlds, constructing, deconstructing, and constructing again. Chatting with their friends all the while.
Whilst we continue to interact remotely, I hope that we can bring some of that dynamism to our workplace interactions. There has to be more than theming landscapes… surely augmented reality and virtual reality workshops are next!?
Whatever happens, the way we interact to co-create will continue to change, and we will keep shifting. Making new recipes, designing better houses, charting the path to new islands, and reaching for the moon.
