Visual facilitation

Visual facilitation is the responsible visual accompaniment of group processes. Process, content and results are presented in visual language, i.e. H. made visible in combinations of text, images and containers. Areas of application are all types of events (from small meetings with team members to large group events with a few hundred participants and forums), teaching and research. There are different styles and formats. Usually simple images and metaphors are used.

origin

Around 1950, architects at the CRSS office in Texas began to graphically record their clients' statements on small cards for the analysis, communication and documentation of the collected data. The cards were combined to form screens and sorted according to specific criteria. In 1969 they published their methodology under the title "Problem Seeking", a standard work for the collaboration between laypeople and architects.

Independently of this, designers and architects in California began in the 1970s, later mainly consultants and facilitators, to make group processes visible in large murals and thus to support them. The idea behind it: groups work together more effectively in dialogue and planning processes if they can graphically track and overlook their own process. Everyone can see the connections and agree on their meaning. At the end of a meeting, a kind of visualized group memory is created, which can be activated at any time with the aid of the visualizations and used for further work. During this time, the first visualized wall newspapers and timelines, collages, mandalas and maps were created in workshops and meetings.

David Sibbet, one of the pioneers of the time (with him Geoff Ball, Fred Lakin, Jim Channon, Nancy Margulies), developed a kind of grammar for visualization (Group GraphicsTM Keyboard). In 1977 he founded Graphic Guides, Inc. in San Francisco, and in the 1990s it became The Grove Consultants International.

The interaction between moderation on the one hand and visualization on the other expanded, almost exclusively in the form of large murals. Since 1995, annual meetings of visualizers have been held in California under the name IFVP "International Forum of Visual Practitioners"; in 2001 the association was officially registered under this name. IFVP and the International Association of Facilitators are thus the global and in Germany active associations for the professional fields of visual facilitation and graphic recording.

Visual facilitation came to Europe from the 1990s. Various visualizers began to develop this new professional field, especially in the order of the company foundings Reinhard Kuchenmüller and Marianne Stifel (VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE®) on the trail of CRSS with small cards; Ursula Arztmann (Innovation Factory), Martin Haussmann (Communication Guides), Ole Qvist-Sørensen (Bigger Picture) and Mathias Weitbrecht (Visual Facilitators), all with large murals. Since then, the professional field has also expanded significantly here. Visualization has meanwhile become a professional field in its own right, stemming from the above-described roots of facilitation, process support and organizational development . Visualization therefore does not come from illustration or the creative field. The focus is not on the picture or the drawing, but on the process. The focus is therefore not on the author . On the contrary, it is a basic component of the Visual Facilitation and Graphic Recording methods that as a visualizer you should take yourself out of it as completely as possible (including personal assessment and changing what you hear or the content). These are consulting and interaction tools for groups and meetings, but nowadays conferences are often accompanied with graphic recording. However, the professional field has changed qualitatively due to the influx of illustrators, especially in Germany.

Possible uses

Wherever people meet to work out, discuss and plan things together, visualization makes sense. Be it in meetings, conferences, seminars, training courses and workshops, be it in teaching, studies, research and development. In the classroom in particular, the use of images and visualizations is still rarely used despite the variety of options. Among other things, learning posters, the design of learning landscapes, the development of a visual language, the handling of images in all their diversity belong here. Visual learning landscapes can promote and support the process of action learning , discovery and exploratory learning through to prototyping. There are many forms and names in use: Communication Graphics, Custom Chart Work, Group Graphics, Information Architecture, Interactive Graphics, Learning Maps, Murals, Reflective Graphics, Road Mapping, Template Design, Scribing, Social Architecture, Visioning, Visual Coaching, Visual Strategic Planning, Visual or Graphic Facilitation, Visual or Graphic Recording, Visual Synthesis, Visual Mirroring, Whiteboard Movies . The boundaries are fluid. The two most commonly used definitions are explained below.

Graphic Recording (visual documentation)

Graphic recording means to record live graphically or to record ( to record ). The terms Visual Recording or Scribing are also used in English. What is meant is the creation of a visual progress log during an event without actively intervening in the process. Graphic recorders usually work with a facilitator (moderator / process facilitator). Graphic Recording was developed in the 1970s to accompany meetings and group processes in a process-oriented manner. It is only recently that conferences and other public events have been documented with it. Depending on the technology used, graphic recording creates either large-scale visualizations that can cover several square meters, or screens that are composed of many small picture cards. Thanks to the spread of tablet computers , graphics tablets and the corresponding software, graphic recording is now also possible digitally.

The skills for graphic recording necessary for the executor are mainly in process accompanying, listening, processing / filtering of information, formation of meta-levels, and only secondarily in the area of drawing. Graphic recorders are specialists in group processes, which they visualize in order to promote group intelligence. You can be trained for different professions. (For the qualities of good graphic recorders, see: Weitbrecht, Mathias).

Visual Facilitation (visual process support)

Visual facilitation is the responsible visual accompaniment of group processes. Process, content and results are presented in visual language, i. H. recorded in picture-word combinations. The visualizer listens, records what is happening and puts the discourse and its results on paper as a live visualization step by step, core statements are filtered out. The visualization acts as a mirror of what is happening directly back on the group process. The live visualization can be supplemented by pre-produced visualizations of essential content (from charts to hand-painted films).

Maps (land and sea maps) can be used as a dialogue tool to test processes in a playful way or to support training measures in the context of change management . Another tool of visual facilitation is to stimulate and guide the participants to visualize their inner images (work with templates, painting actions, etc.).

The Visual Facilitator combines the roles of the Facilitator and the Graphic Recorder.

literature

CRSS: Problem Seeking, An Architectural Programming Primer. ISBN 0-913962-87-2 .
Martin Haußmann, Holger Scholz: Bikablo: Das Trainerwörterbuch der Bildsprache / Facilitators dictionary of visual language. ISBN 3-940315-00-1 .
Robert E. Horn: Visual Language, Global Communication for the 21st Century. Macro VU Press, ISBN 1-892637-09-X .
Reinhard Kuchenmüller, Marianne Stifel: Quality without a Name. Representation of visual facilitation. In: Sandy Schuman (Ed.): The IAF International Handbook of Group Facilitation. ISBN 0-7879-7160-X .
Reinhard Kuchenmüller: Visual protocols - a new medium. In: Moving people with pictures. Organizational Development Dossier 1, ZOE Verlag, 2011.
Julia Löhr: The end of the Powerpoint Parade: Powerpoint presentations have something drowsy about them. Often little is left of the slides in the memory. One way out: Illustrators record a meeting on a canvas. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. December 17, 2010.
Nancy Margulies, Nusa Maal: Mapping Inner Space. ISBN 1-56976-138-8 .
Holger Scholz (text), Martin Haußmann (graphics / illustration): Learning map. No. 4: Visual Facilitating & Graphic Recording. Publisher: Neuland in cooperation with the Kommunikationlotsen, ISBN 978-3-940315-04-5 .
David Sibbet: Principles of Facilitation. The Purpose and Potential of Leading Group Process. ISBN 1-879502-44-5 .
Mathias Weitbrecht: Co-Create! The visualization book . ISBN 3-527-50780-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

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[1] Source Visual Practitioners