Drawings and sketches are effective because they make the abstract more accessible and bring form to ideas. “But, wait,” you say, “I’m not a designer—I can’t draw!” Fear not. There is no secret whiteboarding club. I developed a course to give our consultants basic whiteboarding skills to enable them to lead group meetings and engage clients in better visual conversations. This half-day course is designed to equip attendees with the skills to draw common objects and begin to develop their own visual vocabulary. The course also covers common diagram types and the kinds of information they can be used to structure.
Course material addresses why drawing works, research that shows how drawing improves recollection, techniques to engage others, methods to add layers of information and examples from the field.
Part of this course involves rapid-fire drawing exercises where speed is the goal. The pressure to keep up liberates participants from the need to draw perfectly. This video shows how three participants draw a variety of objects very differently—illustrating that there’s no right or wrong way to draw them.
