Five Sketches™ is informed by psychology

To make the Five Sketches™ method work well, we used several psychological models to give us a specific steps and rules to help us sketch and iterate many ideas and then converge on one good design. The method depends on parallel design, parallel thinking, and helping participants work outside their conative preference, or comfort zone.

Parallel design: Generate ideas separately, together

When one individual generates many possible ideas, and then shares them with others who have done the same, the combined outcome of this parallel design is better than when one person works alone. It’s also better than when a group of people interact to suggest ideas spontaneously, such as during brainstorming. We found evidence to support this.

We were inspired by Bill Buxton’s book, Sketching User Experiences, which advocates both for design in business and sketching in the design process. (Buxton’s influence is why it’s 5 sketches, not 3.) We also found research studies that supported the approach of generating many designs separately before combining them and then converging on good solution.

We wanted to try sketching, but we struggled to find a process that non-designers could follow. How could participants not trained in design take dozens of ideas and converge on one good design? Could they do it quickly? Could they do it without conflict?

Not at first. To make parallel design work for us, we first had to explore and build on several psychological models.

Parallel thinking: Approach the problem together

While solving problems, at different times our thinking can be oriented either toward processes, facts, creativity, judgement, or feeling. However, participants working as a group may not think in the same way at the same time. That can be frustrating and inefficient.

To help us avoid conflict and work together quickly, we were inspired by de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats® tool kit, which identifies six ways of thinking that participants can use. Each step of the Five Sketches™ method helps participants to all think one way, at the same time, as a group, efficiently and with less frustration. This is called parallel thinking.

Parallel thinking is difficult. As a group works on a problem, one participant may be creative, another critical, while a third questions the process. While unintentional, this is disruptive and stressful. We wanted to understand why this happens.

Conative preference: Leave your comfort zone together

To understand why participants would think in ways other than we asked them to, we were inspired by the graph below. It names the ways in which people are able to approach and solve problems, in these quadrants:

Experiencing
Ideating	Generators	Implementers	Judging
	Conceptualisers	Optimisers
Thinking

Most people can approach a problem in different ways, but they have one way that they prefer—it’s their comfort zone, where they know they are capable and productive. When they’re under pressure, people revert to their separate conative preferences during the various tasks that instead require parallel thinking. The sketching steps require a Generator approach. Other steps require a Conceptualiser approach, and still others require Implementer and Optimiser approaches. As we developed the Five Sketches™ method, we wondered: if we ask participants to work outside their comfort zone, will they succeed reliably?

Putting it all together

Combining the above models showed us why, for various steps, some participants would resist the instructions if they were under stress. And—let’s be honest—asking a non-designer to produce a good design can cause some stress. The combined models also showed us that we needed to support participants so they could work outside their comfort zones when the steps temporarily required an approach outside their conative preference.

For every Five Sketches™ step, we developed ways to support participants working outside their comfort zones to encourage the increased efficiency and reduced group frustration that come with parallel thinking. We decided on these supports:

• Clear instructions for each step, that together form a parallel design method. The clearly defined activities avoid confusion and rework.
• Ritual phrases and ritual actions to keep the group thinking in parallel. Opportunities for conflict between different approaches are limited.
• Water and fuel to support hard-working brain cells. This encourages creativity and engagement, and keeps people able to think hard for 4 hours.

As you review the steps for generating quality solutions, you’ll detect the supports that keep participants engaged in parallel design and parallel thinking, while outside their conative preference. You may recognise that:

• saying “Thank you for that idea” is a ritual phrase.
• ensuring each sketch has one negative comment before accepting a second negative comment, and so on, is a ritual action.
• providing quality snacks—one time cheese, another time nuts, another time fruit—is an example of providing water and fuel.

Converging on one good design

By encouraging parallel thinking and working both in and outside participants’ comfort zones, we got the parallel-design outcomes we hoped for. We also found that participants were able to work faster, with less conflict, more team cohesion, and better receptiveness to future design changes. (And there will be changes: recommendations from usability testing, product-management responses to evolving market conditions, and so on.)

We tested, debriefed, modified, and then retested the method until our own teams—participants from Development, QA, Marketing, and other non-designers—could generate a good design solution, over and over, effectively and efficiently.

More…

• Generate quality solutions for software- and content design challenges, or skip to a specific step:
  | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
• Set the problem statement just right. Before you start sketching, ensure you’re solving the right problem.
• Why 5 sketches? Why not 3? It’s not just about the total number. There are individual benefits to sketching that also benefit the organisation.
• How to sketch to share design ideas. This includes a ten-minute group exercise to learn how to communicate through sketches.
• Competing ideas at the finish line? Here’s how to pick a winner, by helping the team to make a decision that satisfies all participants.