It sounds great to have visuals for your brainstorming or design thinking workshops. But what if you can’t draw too well? Or even worse, what if you don’t have the confidence even if you can? Well, no worries, there are options to help you look like the visualization rockstar that you are!
SAP Scenes
“Stories help you keep people at the center of your work.”
SAP Scenes was created a few years ago as SAP’s way to help ideas become more memorable and understandable. The best part is, it’s a free offering on their website.
All you need is some cardstock to print their designs on and a pair of scissors to cut them out to get you closer to improving your storytelling. Now, it may take a while to print out all of the objects. At one point they had toolkits. That’s the one complaint that I have with this system. You can’t just pay and have it already printed and cut-out.
I bought game plastic card stands from Amazon to hold up the paper pieces. Once all of the setup is out of the way, it doesn’t take long to visualize whatever you’re discussing. I’ve found that SAP Scenes works best with personas, their journeys, and visioning for future products and solutions. As they say, stories help you keep people at the center of your work and SAP Scenes will equip you to do so.
Creative Clues
Creative Clues may seem like a bunch of stickers (they are) but they’re also a lovely addition to your brainstorming sessions. There are so many shapes that you’re bound to find something to spice up what you wrote on your sticky note.
I find that these stickers also encourage people to draw when they hadn’t thought about it before. So sure, it’s an aide to make your wall of stickies look better, but it also supports individual growth through having the confidence to just draw any symbol that communicates your message. It doesn’t have to just be stickers.
These activities may not be the right solution every time you have a meeting, but they’re definitely worth exploring for different phases of your projects. It may even be good when working with different teams, having everyone sort through the images serves as a binding force between different groups.
So try these out in your meetings, take some photos of everything and share it within your workplace. They may get you attention you didn’t know you deserved! 😉
