When dealing with ill-defined problems, we often walk into situations that are messy and chaotic. Visually synthesizing what you’re seeing and hearing in an organization can be a powerful way to identify gaps and opportunities. By drawing simple pictures from your interview notes, you can translate the stories in a way that can help you frame problems in a way that you can’t always do with interview notes alone.
Drawing and mapping are techniques that help us make sense and simplify steps. A place to start is to capture the current state of a situation. It can help you distill complex situations into more manageable and digestible pieces. It can also make the gaps and pain points more clear and obvious by using simple tools such as current state maps, experience maps and journey maps
Your drawings don’t need to be perfect or be a work of art. As a practitioner, they are mostly for your eyes only. Your maps can be in any format you like – do whatever works for you. I’m personally partial to post-is and sharpies exported to Mural via the Post-It mobile app. Once imported to Mural, you can play around with them, share with others and collaborate in real time.
It will be messy, and it will change, evolve and morph. And that’s OK. Drawing is a great way to start organizing the messiness.
Jacque Patterson 