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Braindrawing

Creative tools > Braindrawing

When to use it | How to use it | Example | How it works | See also

When to use it

Use it when you have a group of people who prefer non-verbal methods of creativity.

Use it as a break from verbal creative methods (a different approach often helps).

Use it when you have space to pin up a number of flipchart pages on the wall (and space for people to walk about in front of them).

How to use it

Prepare

Pin or tape up a number of flipchart pages around the room. About three to seven is usually adequate. Have enough flipchart pens so everyone can write on these. A mixture of colors is good.

Tell everyone what you are going to do.

Do the doodling

Ask people to go to one flipchart at a time and start or extend the doodles there. Do an example yourself to show this. The idea is that people do not fill the paper, but simply add to what is there, so the result is a mixture of everyone's doodles.

Stop the doodles when all flipcharts are reasonably full (but not overloaded) with doodling. This will not take long - only a few minutes normally.

Use the results as stimuli

Ask people what shapes they can see in the pictures, what it reminds them of and then how this can be brought back to create ideas to solve the problem at hand.

Capture the ideas on another flipchart and process afterwards in the normal way.

Example

I am looking for a job and ask some friends to come around and help me come up with some ideas. We use Braindrawing, and one of the pictures created is as below:

Some of the ideas that it leads to are:

• Fish shape on left: 'Cast out the net to new seas'

• Square eyes in middle: 'Look on the internet'

• Curls on right: 'Ask the hairdresser (they talk to lots of people)'

How it works

Braindrawing works by providing non-verbal stimulus to the creative (and non-verbal) right brain.

Having the doodle done by everyone ensures that it is completely random, with a number of different elements. Mixed colours adds to the stimulation.

See also

PSI, Modeling, Brainstorming