It took until late 2022, but now all three major platform makers offer collaborative drawing board apps — or, as I like to think of these, digital drawing alternatives to napkins, notebooks and chalkboards. Apple Freeform, an app included as part of an iOS, iPadOS and macOS systems update in mid-December 2022, provides a versatile visual collaboration space, with support not only for drawn lines and typed text but also insertion of a wide range of images, files and shapes. Drawing Together offers a visual language with five purposefully abstract symbols. Participants can only use these five symbols to express thoughts, ideas, and challenges. This constraint still gives sufficient opportunities for creativity. It might actually boost creativity. I always encourage participants to use different colors for the symbols. Draw a symbol in red, green, or orange to give it an extra dimension. Draw symbols in different shapes and sizes. Merge symbols. Use the same symbols multiple times. There are so many different ways to use the 5 symbols. Give some examples, and trust the creativity of the group to make use of the potential. 6. Share drawings with “Conversation Cafe”

Use as a template a progression from status quo, through call to novelty, discovery, validation, early adoption, and spread Invite participants to create a second draft, in which they refine their story by dramatizing the size, placement, and color of the symbols. 10 min. Figure C Microsoft Whiteboard provides a significant number of templates to support tasks such as project planning, brainstorming and learning. Instead of using verbal language as its medium for interaction, Drawing Together makes use of constrained visual language with five purposefully abstract symbols. Steps to facilitate Drawing Together The book Moominland Midwinter (Finnish Taikatalvi, Swedish Trollvinter) resonates with our project. Moomintroll awakens in the middle of his hibernation, and finds himself in a completely unknown, frozen environment. Moominland, usually full of life and colour, has suddenly become still, white and frozen. Together with his value creatures, most importantly Little My and Hemulen, Moomintroll learns to survive and enjoy the white winter-wonderland. They also find ways to help others in need, such as a frozen squirrel.

What is made possible? You can help people access hidden knowledge such as feelings, attitudes, and patterns that are difficult to express with words. When people are tired, their brains are full, and they have reached the limits of logical thinking, you can help them evoke ideas that lie outside logical, step-by-step understanding of what is possible. Stories about individual or group transformations can be told with five easy-to-draw symbols that have universal meanings. The playful spirit of drawing together signals that more is possible and many new answers are expected. Drawing Together cuts through the culture of overreliance on what people say and write that constrains the emergence of novelty. It also provides a new avenue of expression for some people whose ideas would otherwise not surface. Invite participants to combine the symbols to create the first draft of a story, working individually and without words, about “the journey” of working on a challenge or an innovation. 10 min.

Collaboration tools on each of these three major platforms let you draw, type, add images and much more. Image: Andy Wolber/TechRepublic With Jamboard, collaboration isn’t limited to a single board. You may add additional frames, such as the frames shown along the top of Figure B. In fact, you may add up to a total of 20 frames within a single Jamboard file. This capability may make it easier to group or sort ideas, such as notes associated with different aspects of a project. min) Invite everyone to draw the first version of the story of their personal journey. Encourage participants to include the challenges, special moments, and surprises they faced while moving forward. Emphasize that drawing should take place in silence and without words or other symbols. Participants can use the same symbols multiple times. Don’t explain the intention of this structure too much, trust the creativity of the participants.

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Attribution: Liberating Structure developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. Inspired by David Sibbet ( The Grove) and Angeles Arrien (see Signs of Life). People who use a macOS system alongside an iPhone or iPad may choose to take a photo, scan a document or add a sketch using one of those nearby devices from within Freeform on macOS. The nearby device auto-switches to the selected mode as long as you have Bluetooth enabled and are signed in to the same Apple ID on both systems. Best business software Conversation Café encourages people to listen and understand each other’s perspectives on a profound, shared topic or challenge instead of trying to convince or persuade others to see it your way. Sitting in a circle with a simple set of agreements and a talking object, small groups engage in consecutive rounds of dialogue. Conversation Cafe invites people to listen to one another’s thoughts and reflect together on a shared challenge. As remote work becomes increasingly common, turn to these drawing tools when you need to scribble and show people something that may be difficult to describe with words. Each of these drawing systems pairs well with the respective platform’s video-conferencing system, too: Freeform with FaceTime, Jamboard with Google Meet, and Whiteboard with Microsoft Teams. When you’re done with a drawing, you may export your board, either as an image (Google Jamboard and Microsoft Whiteboard) or PDF (Apple Freeform and Google Jamboard) for long-term reference. Invite participants to practice drawing the five symbols: circle, rectangle, triangle, spiral, star person. 5 min.

Drawing Together can serve as a powerful Liberating Structure to get everyone’s thinking started about the team or group. Invite everyone to draw their teams' journey and include the challenges they faced. Or draw the current state of the team. Optionally, share the drawing via Impromptu Networking or a simple 1–2–4-ALL, and afterward create the team compass. 8. Connect “Drawing Together” to “Heard, See, and Respected”The solution’s distinctive strength, though, may be the number of built-in templates, as shown in Figure C. Without knowing a thing about it, at that moment his velvet skin decided to start growing woollier. It decided to become, by and by, a coat of fur for winter use. That would take some time, but at least the decision was made. And that’s always a good thing. (Jansson 1958, 18)”