How to use visual aids to facilitate better collaboration

Visual aids are a necessary tool for anyone who facilitates group collaboration, or multi-hour (or multi-day!) workshops. They break up dense information, activate different parts of the brain, and help participants better visualize ideas and the connections between them. In other words, visual aids are powerful and should absolutely be part of your toolkit if you lead group collaboration and ideation. 

In my work as a facilitator, there are three primary ways I use visual aids, which I’ll cover today. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of the benefits of each method, along with some examples you can apply directly to your work.

3 Ways to Use Visual Aids to Facilitate Better Thinking and Collaboration

1. Sketching Exercises Make the Intangible Tangible

Sketching exercises are incredible for their ability to move ideas into a more visual and tangible format. Rather than talking about an idea at length, sketching helps people visualize them and understand their own thoughts better, as well as those of others. 

When using words alone, people may not have a shared understanding of what one another means. I once worked with a team that had shared language about an idea (and had been talking about it for months), but when they sketched it out in a collaborative workshop, they learned that they were not on the same page. 

Guiding groups through sketching exercises makes their ideas more tangible rather than having them explain or simply write them out. Once complete, everyone can stick their idea up on the wall and have a discussion around the concept’s merit (which keeps the focus on the idea itself rather than trying to align on a shared understanding of words).

My favorite way to guide sketching is to have people create a 3-panel prototype, with each panel showing a step or a part of the idea they have in mind. To follow this method, have each participant fold a standard piece of paper into three sections the long way. The goal is to have them detail a picture of their idea—whether from a brainstorm or elsewhere—by using each panel to sketch out the flow of the customer/end user’s experience.

Three panels/steps is enough to get people thinking through an experience, but not so much that they’ll be overwhelmed trying to figure out all the details. I also love that the shape of the panel mimics a mobile view, which is particularly helpful if your team is working on a digital product.

As a reminder, this is a sketching exercise, not a writing exercise. Any words included should be part of the experience—like copy—rather than descriptors. If participants want to add a bit of annotation, that’s okay, but no more than a comic book. The experience should be obvious without needing a narrative to back it up.

2. Sticky Notes Help Organize Ideas 

Using sticky notes to brainstorm or ideate paves the way for seeing connections between ideas. When you put everyone’s ideas up on the wall, you can easily move the sticky notes around to sort, cluster, and organize them into themes. This helps people visualize the decision they're making and makes it easier to draw associations between concepts. I know that sticky notes can feel overplayed but there is a reason they persist. They’re truly a magical tool for sorting, organizing, and connecting disparate ideas.

If you’re going to use sticky notes, there are a few guidelines I suggest you follow.  

The last thing you want to do is cause overwhelm by leveraging too many Post-It Note colors and sizes. Personally, I like for participants to use Canary Yellow 3”x5” Post-Its. This is my go-to variety because they’re just the right size to support drawing and writing exercises, allowing enough detail to be included, but not too much. And a single color prevents busyness when they’re stuck up on the wall. 

I also bring square sticky notes in one or two colors to be used exclusively by the facilitator (me). These are used to help highlight themes, create labels, identify categories, number items, make note of decisions, and generally organize information that’s posted around the room. My favorite colors to use are pink and blue because they’re distinct from one another, and very clearly different from the Canary Yellow Post-Its the participants use.

3. Visuals Guide Participants Through the Work Ahead

This might seem obvious, but I’m still amazed at the amount of presentations I see that pack too many words into slides without any visuals to break things up or take their place. Words, while powerful, can be abstract and up for interpretation, or used as a crutch. Swapping language for imagery is a great way to help the group stay engaged.

In other words, make it part of your practice to use more imagery and visual formats. This goes beyond adding visuals to your presentation deck (which is a good starting place!).  

For example, you could start your workshop by writing the agenda on the board for all to see so that the group it’s aligned and has clarity throughout the duration of your session.

If you’re meeting virtually or hybrid, it could mean making a Miro board to steer people through the work and serve as a launch point for collaboration.

It might also mean preparing worksheets or other collateral that you’ll pass out during the session, or hanging big sticky notes around the room for use during various breakout activities or live captures.  

It can take many shapes and forms, but the goal is to move things from a purely verbal or written format into a visual format that is easy for everyone to see and interact with.

Visual Aids Are a Game Changer

Incorporating visual aids into your facilitation work will significantly upgrade the quality of your collaborative sessions. It’s a necessary and essential way to unlock creativity, inspire the best ideas from different team members, and get everyone on the same page. 

This work takes time and preparation, but the benefits to your team are numerous! If you aren’t sure where to start, take a look at an existing presentation or agenda and run an audit. Are there opportunities to swap words with imagery? Could you turn a verbal brainstorm session into a sketching exercise or activity that utilizes Post–It Notes? Are you using a physical or virtual whiteboard to its full capabilities?

Make adjustments based on your answers, and feel free to use some of the methods I shared here. I detail a few more sketching exercises in this post, as well as a visual voting method in this article, both of which might be helpful for your next collaborative gathering.