Computer voice
Season Two, Episode 14.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
Wow, I’m already feeling the pressure.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
No, no, no, chill, chill, chill, chill.

Per Axbom
Well, that’s the interesting thing isn’t it? Why do you feel pressure because that’s, I mean, it’s the most safe space you could ever find yourself in.

James Royal-Lawson
Absolutely.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I’m friendly person so I won’t judge, in front of you.

Per Axbom
Also the listeners won’t be able to see anything. You can brag about the fine artwork that you’re producing.

James Royal-Lawson
But they’ll know from the level of laughter from you two

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay, wait a second. Can I just? What do I do with this cable? How long is this cable, can I just unravel it and put it behind me? This is perfect.

James Royal-Lawson
Hello, I’m James Royal-Lawson.

Per Axbom
And I’m Per Axbom.

James Royal-Lawson
This is UX podcast. We’re in Stockholm, Sweden. And you are listening to us from all over the world including Bermuda and Australia.

Per Axbom
Eva-Lotta Lamm is a sought after expert and teacher in the area of sketching, sketchnoting and visual thinking. She is regularly speaking at international design conferences and has been teaching sketching workshops for companies and teams for many years.

James Royal-Lawson
We had the privilege to spend a bit of time, with Eva-Lotta ahead of recording this. And we witnessed her performing on stage at a conference where she bundled together speaking, of course, along with teaching and visualising. It was quite a masterclass to watch her command all those aspects of her work onstage in front of 5-600 people.

Per Axbom
I couldn’t agree more. I mean, talk about having a big class and just feeling so comfortable with teaching it and everybody just learning something and having so many takeaways from just watching a person on stage.

James Royal-Lawson
And I think that is actually an important point: feeling comfortable. Eva-Lotta really does make you feel comfortable while she’s doing her work. And she’s very good at it. So we had an alternative idea for this episode. It’s not an interview in the classic sense. It is – I’m actually not really completely sure how we describe this. I think it’s a live audio-described workshop.

Per Axbom
Yeah, I think that’s it, isn’t it. She was just teaching us how to draw. And we were trying to make it into a podcast by describing the stuff we were doing.

James Royal-Lawson
And the thing is, we initially thought maybe she was teaching us how to draw. But there was so much more to this. So here’s some tips. Get some pens, Eva-Lotta will explain a bit about pens in the episode. Either sit down and try and follow along with us and sketch with us. Or even better, if you can, get a couple of colleagues or people you know to listen together with while we’re going through our exercises. So you can try them too. And stick with it to the end. It ends up being really very relevant to our work as designers.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Is it still working? Am I still on? Okay, good.

Per Axbom
Okay, so we’re sitting at a desk, with Eva-Lotta Lamm with white paper and some pens that she has handed us. And now things are supposed to happen and I’m expecting magic and expecting to learn so much right now.

James Royal-Lawson
Well, we got a blank piece of paper and I’ve got I’ve got three pens here.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
A black pen, which is always good. It’s the basic, like just a simple felt tip pen. And we have the same pen in a nice apple green colour because colour is always good to highlight things or to put annotations, because colour naturally helps us to separate different levels of information from each other. It’s super easy to see. And then we have the magic shadow pen. It makes sketches look amazing immediately. It’s the Tombow ABT Dual Brush N75.

James Royal-Lawson
It’s very cool. And to be honest, it actually does look a little bit like a magician’s wand. Because it’s got it’s got lids on either end, I think it has? No, no.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, it has two tips. It has a thin tip that I basically rarely use. And then it has this wonderful lush, soft brush tip. That is great for doing the shadow.

James Royal-Lawson
And that’s got a grey lid. So it actually does look like a wand. So I’m gonna make Per disappear.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
We’ll do some magic. We’ll do some magic for beginners. All right. Let’s just do a couple of exercises. And then at the very end, I want to do an experiment with you that I never did with anybody else. But we’ll ramp up, right.

Per Axbom
That so good. You’re so good at this: cliffhanger.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. Stay tuned to the end. Okay, good. So we’ll start with an exercise that is actually not from me, but that is amazing. Probably lots of people know it. I learned it from Dave Gray, who’s an excellent visual thinker, and you should all Google him and see his work. I learned a lot from him as well.

James Royal-Lawson
I think actually, we attended the same workshop back – was it 2012? – here in Portugal, when he was…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Was it Dave’s workshop? I went to Dave’s workshop once but I can’t remember where. Was it here?

Per Axbom
It was here.

Per Axbom
If you were here in 2012, when we were, then that was the same workshop.

Per Axbom
I think so.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. Anyway, and he learned it from somebody else. And I forgot the name of this person. But this exercise is called squiggle birds. And basically, what we do is we just take a pen, we could take the black one, and just do kind of four random squiggles on our page like squiggle, squiggle, squiggle, and squiggle. And just you can do any kind of shape for your screen. Just four, it’s enough. Yeah, some space around. Okay, good. Done. Perfect. Look at your beautiful squiggles if you could see these squiggles you’d be jealous right now.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, I’ve done mine in quadrants and Per’s is is not taking up the full page. But I’m not judging.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
We won’t do the psychological analysis of your drawings right now. That’s for another podcast. So we have the first part – the squiggle – now we turn them into birds and birds have a few attributes birds have beaks, which basically looks like a V on the side. We’ll just do the inventory now, we’ll draw a V on the side and on the top just to see what so we can add beaks.

James Royal-Lawson
I’ve noticed you’ve changed pen now to the green one.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, just so that you can see it. You could you could use your black pen. You could use the green pen.

James Royal-Lawson
Okay. Yeah, because we’ve got black squiggles.

James Royal-Lawson
She’s doing it for clarity for us.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so the green now draws your attention to the additional bits. So dots for eyes. We can place dots. And then we can also do feet, which is basically a vertical line and then a V-shape to the front and one line to the back. You know, like a little tripod. It’s like a foot and then you can do two of these feet like birds feet, right? These are the things that we’re going to add to our squiggles.

James Royal-Lawson
Okay. Yeah. All right. So just the greater than symbol, and then a couple of dots and then kind of broken pluses.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Now it’s basically a short vertical line for the for the leg. And then we have the two lines that go to the front, which are the front toes and one line that goes to the back, which is the back toe. So this is just the inventory. And now we’re gonna actually make birds of our squiggles. So we go to the first squiggle and the first thing I like to add always is just a beak. So add the beak to your bird. You can basically add it anywhere. It just works. Add a beak, okay, okay, now you can add an eye because you know where the eye should go in your bird. I mean, you can see it. Now you can add legs to your bird. Is he standing? Is he flying? My bird is gonna fly like this.

James Royal-Lawson
Okay, yeah, we do two legs?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, I mean, maybe one leg is hidden. I don’t know. Just put a leg on your bird.

James Royal-Lawson
Actually, I think my one works with one leg.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, maybe it’s a – what are they called – flamingo?

James Royal-Lawson
It’s sleeping.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
You have a running chicken. Wonderful. If there’s anything missing, of course you can add anything.

Per Axbom
I’m kind of blown away. Because the squiggle I drew was like the most random thing ever. And now it looks like a running bird.

James Royal-Lawson
And of course, I’ve realised that my squiggle, it does include a wing, almost automatically.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, most squiggles include wings because we’re very good at seeing what we want to see. Our brain is great at making sense of stuff. So we can do some more birds. If you’re really courageous then think about where you would want to put the beak and then put it in exactly the wrong position and then try to figure out how to still make a bird out of it.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, because I’ve got like a more like a figure of eight squiggle.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, just put the beak somewhere super random where you would never put it, and then, this is for the courageous people. And now see what your bird is doing. Your bird is doing yoga.

James Royal-Lawson
Because I put my beak on the bottom half of my figure of eight squiggle. And that’s kind of…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Where’s the eye, where the legs, what is the rest?

Per Axbom
Mine is lying on its back now with feet in the air.

James Royal-Lawson
Oh, do you know what? I’ve realised that I can see both its wings and it’s flying.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, well, you figure it out.

James Royal-Lawson
Wonder how it works. Where would I put his legs?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Try it out and you’ll see how it how it goes.

James Royal-Lawson
I’ll just stick a leg coming out the back here and think about…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. And we’ll just finish our four birds.

James Royal-Lawson
Okay, there’s now a foot, two legs. Oh my word, that figure of eight which I really didn’t think could possibly turn out to be a bird actually looks like a bird that’s flying.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. It has a it has a funky feather on the head.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, it’s got a ruffled feather on one of his wings.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
All right, so we can finish our birds. And if you want to, the fun thing that I like to do as well is either give each bird a title or I give them a speech bubble and think about what they would say. So I have a flying bird. It’s just saying “Weeeeee!” and just going pew-pew! And this one is too late for school.

James Royal-Lawson
Too late for school?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yes, this one is too late for school. He’s really on his way.

James Royal-Lawson
Diving. Oh, yeah.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Where’s the fish? He needs some fish that he’s going for. It needs some…

James Royal-Lawson
Eva-Lotta is now adding to my diving bird. She’s adding water. And a fish.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Now we know where he’s going.

James Royal-Lawson
So he’s definitely going down there for that fish. Speech bubble, you said to me that I should do now.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. The important thing about speech bubbles is first the speech and then the bubble. Because no matter how big you make the bubble speech will never fit. Yeah, you already experienced it. Yes. So first write the word and then draw an ellipsis around it and then draw a little bent line that is pointing to the person or to the bird who’s speaking. So just word ellipses around it. And now pointed to roughly to the mouth. Yes.

James Royal-Lawson
Okay. And I’ve done mine in black, which is the same colour as the body of the bird. But actually, I think it looks better in green, like you’ve done.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
The thing is about colour, you know, it’s like colour draws attention. But also, I often do my figures and the actual physical things that I draw in black. And then the meta things like movement lines, or speech, or annotations and things like that in colour, because it’s conceptually a different level, and then it doesn’t interfere with the shapes of the actual physical world. So it’s easier to see what you drew, and you can still have the additional information and it doesn’t compete that much visually. So I also have a breakdance bird. I don’t know what he’s doing. But it must be breakdance. Because it looks really weird. And maybe he also has, he has this cap here. It’s kind of a B-boy, bird. B-boys are the breakdance crew – cool people. And somehow the, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s happening. Right? If in doubt, and you don’t know what it is, it might be breakdance.

James Royal-Lawson
Do you ever add rollerskates to your birds?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I would love to. And I’m gonna do that right now, because this bird is late for school. And of course, if this bird had super cool roller skates, he wouldn’t have the same problem because you’re much faster. Here we go. Roller skates are basically just triangles at the end of the feet, and just you put two circles around it.

James Royal-Lawson
I see now, so you’ve drawn over the foot.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
We will have to post these pictures so people can actually look at them. So, the cool thing is, when you did something wrong, you know, like the foot of the bird and I want to now turn it into a sneaker or turn it into a roller skate. Then I can just draw over it and fill it with the same colour. And then you can’t see that there any lines that I’m hiding. But basically just drawing a foot, you just put a triangle to it and then you can put wheels on it. And you could also put some laces.

James Royal-Lawson
Literally that was just that was just a triangle stuck on the side of a vertical stick. And then three dashes to indicate laces and the little little loops above that and then circles underneath. That was very simple. And yeah, your bird does now have roller skates. And I’m mentioning roller skates because I know that Eva-Lotta really is into her roller skating now.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yes and birds on roller skates are even better. Why not?

Per Axbom
Because why would they fly?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Well, they can do both, you know, like airplanes.

James Royal-Lawson
This is important for landing.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Alright, let’s just quickly write our name on our pieces of paper so when we post this together with a podcast you can all appreciate it. Okay, I think the birds are all amazing. I love all of your birds.

James Royal-Lawson
That one’s not saying anything, Per.

Per Axbom
It’s not saying anything. I’m not really seeing what he’s doing right now.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Show me.

James Royal-Lawson
So the challenge of Per’s fourth squiggle is that his squiggle has disconnected lines. It’s not a continuous line.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Well, if you feel anything is missing, you know, you could also kind of go like, ‘Okay, this is actually the… you know, and this is the… kind of the tail…

James Royal-Lawson
So Eva-Lotta now is filling in the gaps between Per’s…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
And then maybe it’s… I want to do it… You know, here’s the other wing….

Per Axbom
Oh, that’s beautiful. Now it’s coming in for landing.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, he’s just like one of these dodos that goes like donk-donk-donk you know, that is landing on his arse. Sorry. It’s a bit, you know, he’s a bit awkward, but he basically just bounced and, and landed…

Per Axbom
In 10 seconds, you made my squiggle into something amazing.

James Royal-Lawson
That was just kind of like let it go, let it flow, and just do something. You know, don’t let the gaps hold you back. Right?

Per Axbom
Yeah. Just keep on keep going.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, you can always add something to just try out what it’s like. And if it doesn’t work, then it’s just a piece of paper that you did on a Thursday morning that nobody will ever see. So all right, cool. That was exercise number one, which is a great warming up form any workshops, because it’s fun, and a small one. So credit to Dave Gray’s colleague friend whose name I forgot.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Passing through the generations.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Exactly. Yeah, we’re all standing – drawing on the shoulders of giants.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, giant squiggle birds.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Exactly. So we can do another little improv game that we can do as a group. You can also do it just on your own, but with a group, it’s more fun. And it’s building on the same thing. So what we’re gonna do is – it has five steps, I will remember while we’re doing it. Okay, so take your pen, and

James Royal-Lawson
Just the normal black pen?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
The normal black pen, it doesn’t matter and draw a random shape onto your piece of paper. It shouldn’t be too big or too small. You know maybe like your hand or you know. I’ll just draw a random shape and it can be kind of any shape. It can be complex, or it can be simple, just a random shape.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, and this is not a squiggle this time. This is an outline of a shape.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
An outline of something. And it can be completely random. It can be amorphous, it can be simple. It can be complicated.

James Royal-Lawson
It can have curves and corners, and so on. Yep.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
It can be long, can be short. Okay. This is step number one – random shape. Now, we’ll pass our paper to the right. And we are confronted with something.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. So, everyone knows, now I’ve received Per’s shape. Eva-Lotta has got my shape and and Per’s got Eva-Lotta’s shape.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
So now we look at this and we make a thing out of it. We look at it and see what does it look like and we add a few details inside of it to kind of make it a thing. You know, that like, you can also turn it around, you know, and see if it inspires you if you turn it around. And we’ll see what it is. So…

James Royal-Lawson
Okay. So let me see here now and try and draw some things on to these shapes. And I’m doing some talking just to fill in the silence, which of course is making me distracted. But nevermind.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
It doesn’t have to, you know, be a perfect object. Just add a few things to it, so that you could maybe see what this thing is. Yeah. So I see a person emerging and….

James Royal-Lawson
So mine, I’ve gone for the classic of just adding arms and legs and a head.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
So we have a person there and then we have something with a helmet.

Per Axbom
AYeah, it’s a helmet. I’m so happy you saw that.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
So you make something out of it like an object or person. Good. Now, when we’re done with that, did you already define what that is? Is it good enough for you? Is it enough?

Per Axbom
Yeah, it’s enough. Okay, it’s enough.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Wonderful. Yeah. So now we pass on our paper again.

James Royal-Lawson
So I’m glad I’m passing mine to Eva-Lotta so she can correct how bad the nose is on my person.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
You have to turn it the other way around. This is this is a water gun. Can you see?

James Royal-Lawson
Are you sure you don’t want to define yours a little bit more?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
All right, no, you’ll deal with it.

Per Axbom
Deal with it, James.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yes. So the next thing is, we want to add some context to it. So we added detail to make this a thing. And now we want to add, do we want to add context first? Yeah, no, oh, no, let’s add, let’s add some interaction. So interaction means we’re probably adding a person that is interacting with the object in some way, shape, or form, or an animal or something else. But we’ll add some action, some interaction to it. And you have to figure out what this is.

James Royal-Lawson
Exactly. Per’s given me no clues.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Somebody using this object or interacting with this object or shouting at this object or wearing the object or whatever. So let’s put some interaction.

James Royal-Lawson
I don’t know, I mean, Per’s looks a bit like a helmet, although it could even be maybe a bird of some kind. Still. I’m gonna have to really think quick now about what I can do with this, okay.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, so we’re drawing. I have…

Per Axbom
Since I’m seeing a water gun here, I’m thinking, can I add a person or…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
You can add a person or part of a person is good as well. You just have to add some action or interaction. So something needs to happen. Yeah. So you can also use….

James Royal-Lawson
I’ve done a small version of Per’s shape to make it look like a tiny bird.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Oh, so you it’s a bird. Okay, good.

James Royal-Lawson
It kind of wants to be fed by…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
How is it interacting? Is it ignoring it?

James Royal-Lawson
No, I’ve done that. It’s a little baby bird. And it’s got its head pointing upwards, and it’s reaching out for food. So I’m kind of implying that the big shape is actually one of his parents that should be feeding it.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
You don’t have to explain everything. We’ll figure it out.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I’m just doing it for the benefit the listeners.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. But then the question is, what is the difference between a description and an interpretation? Because I don’t, I don’t know. This is a baby. I thought it was a rabbit. Because, it’s like what we see and what we interpret can be lots of different things, which is great, because that’s why I love labels as well, when you put words on it, a good label can save a bad sketch. So because if I now label this thing, baby bird, people will see a baby bird. But, if I label it sad little rabbit, they will see the sad little rabbit.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, this is an excellent point from an accessibility point of view, because we’re doing audio descriptions of things that we’re drawing. And an exactly like Eva-Lotta says that labels are essential if we want to convey more concrete meaning in these things or influence people’s understanding of what we’ve got, which in many of the contexts we design in, we do need and do have to give our descriptive labels on the thing that we’ve created.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
In improvisation we call this, we call this additional information that we give, we call this framing and you can frame a situation and also reframe the situation. Because by adding a different context, you can completely change what the situation is like, you know, and language is the fastest way of framing something. Because it is so powerful with one word you can evoke so much. So do we have some interaction?

Per Axbom
Well, I went against adding a hand because for some reason, in my head, I saw a bubble come up coming out of the water gun and inside the bubble are some ants.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay. Wonderful. So I will just write it on my piece. So we started with a random shape, I’ll just write it down. So we’ll have it. So first start with a random shape, then we then we exchanged the piece of paper. Second was adding details to make an object or you know, a thing. Number three was adding interaction in some way, shape or form. So we’ll go we’ll pass it on.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Number three is actually adding context. So adding some kind of background: where’s this thing happening? What is what is around there so we can add more information of where this is. All right.

James Royal-Lawson
Where is it? So I’ve now got Per’s – sorry Eva-Lotta’s gun that Per did the ant-bubble to. I’ve now got that one.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
The cool thing is with context, it can be anything and also you know, you don’t have to make sense. You could also go completely bonkers and like ‘Oh, this looks like a water gun fight so I’m not gonna put it at a garden party, but I’m gonna put it… I don’t know, at the bus stop.’ And I put a bus stop there and I see what’s happening. So you can always go with the logic and try to complete the scene with what you think it would be. But you could also surprise yourself and the viewers. Yeah, and you could also fill your context, you could also add, you know, anything, you could add a background or a person or something that just gives more information to where the scene is happening.

James Royal-Lawson
To be honest, actually, this feels like one of the hardest steps, because I guess now we’re going…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Also just try by putting something random – you could put a Christmas tree and see what happens. And then, you know, sometimes just by adding something random, your head will figure things out and make sense of it. It’s like, you know, when you add a Christmas tree, it’s like, ‘Oh, a little child got a water gun as a Christmas present or something.’ I don’t know.

James Royal-Lawson
So I’ve drawn a box around what was Eva-Lotta’s water gun with Per’s ant-bubble. And I’ve drawn a box around it. And now I’m actually putting a price on that to make it into more of a kind of children’s toy in its packaging, is what I’m thinking, trying to do. And I’ll do another line around which is kind of supposed to be some kind of plastic cellophane or something holding the gun in its actual packaging. I’m gonna give a bit more shimmer line.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I have these ambiguous, I don’t know, it looks a little bit like Darth Vader is the father of a little baby bird. I’m not quite sure what’s happening on this one. But I’m just adding a nest and a tree to kind of put them a little bit up in the sky and make it a little bit homely where they are. So here we have a lovely tree. Like Bob Ross would have said, you know, your little friend where your little friends live…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
So, so the shape….

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I’m channelling Bob Ross, sorry.

Per Axbom
The shape has turned into a large person who’s waist is being measured by a man in glasses. And I decided just to put them on a boat just completely randomly. And I have no idea what that’s going to do with me. But they’re right now on a boat.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I’m on the boat. That’s a good one.

Per Axbom
So they’re probably pirates of some sort. That explains why his clothes are…

James Royal-Lawson
Put a pirate hat on someone.

Per Axbom
Oooh, that’s interesting.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Well, anyway, we’ll go to the next step. That’s a good idea. But it’s his drawing.

Per Axbom
Stop giving me recommendations, James.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
And you’re already at the step that we… it’s okay, you’re good. You’re foreshadowing. Because step number five. Step number five is we’ll first exchange and now we add language.

James Royal-Lawson
Ah, yeah, I did do that.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
It’s good. I’ll add more language. So language could be – you could give the thing a title, you could make the figures in it speak. You could put signs up. Anything you want. Just adding language to it to kind of give a little bit more information of what is happening in the story.

James Royal-Lawson
Am I allowed to add anything else but language?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
No, at this step we only add language. Yeah, I know. I know. Now the juices are flowing.

James Royal-Lawson
I was going to add the pirate flag that we talked about, but I’m not allowed to now.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
This time only language.

James Royal-Lawson
And it was… Okay.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, so I already received some language on the packaging. There’s already saying that this is a package of an ant bubble gun, which is great. And I’m just gonna make it a little bit more spectacular. So ‘NEW’ and now I’m gonna… it’s also ‘Even more fun!’. So I’m adding some excitement with my language to my packaging.

James Royal-Lawson
And I’ve spun off Per’s pirate boat thing and I’ve added ‘Shiver me timbers’ as a speech bubble for the figure that is holding the measuring tape round the person who is on the boat with the tailor – I guess it’s who that is.

Per Axbom
And this thing that nobody could quite make out is that sort of a helmet with a pointy nose is in a nest now in a tree with this small little bird-slash-rabbit that James drew before but now it is a small bird because it’s shouting ‘Mummy!’ to this larger beast.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. Yeah. Is the larger thing answering something? Maybe that would be interesting. Come on.

Per Axbom
It’s not, because it’s actually a scarecrow.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, I’m just thinking, it actually doesn’t look animal.

Per Axbom
Quite a sad story really.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Well, if you wanted to make it clear, you could label this thing a scarecrow if you wanted to. Or you could also give it a title and say ‘It’s only a scarecrow.’ Or you could leave it open. You know, this is always… it depends how much you want to shape the story? How much information do you want to give? But that’s up to you that mummy thing is already good. So now we added the language. And now comes the last step. We’ll just swap again once more. One last time. And now is your time when you can add anything that you think is missing from it. This could be some colour, it could be some shading with the lovely shading pen, you know, where you just make things a little bit more three dimensional.

Per Axbom
The shading just makes it look fantastic.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
The thing is, you take the shading pen, and you just run it on the bottom right inner edge of any kind of object you have and it makes the thing three dimensional. Okay, so yeah, because the light comes from the top left. And so you just run it on the bottom right inner edge of everything and it instantly makes it look more professional.

James Royal-Lawson
Oh, it actually does. Yeah, so just just a few simple grey lines.

Per Axbom
My bubble now looks like a bubble. That’s so weird.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, wow, you give it shading. Shading inside the object makes things more three dimensional. And when you have drop shadows, like the shadow that is cast on the surface that the object is on, then it anchors it in space. Two different things. I’m going to just make the boat a little bit clearer because it’s kind of fading a bit in the background because it’s in green, and I’m just gonna use my black pen to kind of emphasise the boat that I can see that we’re really on a boat here because I think it’s amazing that this tailor is actually measuring a pretty balloony person. Like it looks a little bit like a – I don’t know, maybe that’s a Swedish version of the Michelin Man, I have no idea. You tell me, you Swedish boys.

Per Axbom
I mean, some pirates do have quite airy clotes, I think.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. So I’m just I’m just finishing the boat a little bit and I’m also making the water grey to put a little bit of contrast in, to kind of see that it’s water. It’s just, you know, we can add some visual clarity or also if there’s a detail missing and you want to you know, add your own pun to it or something, you know. I could actually take your idea and put a little pirate flag on the boat. Come on, I’m making a circle. And I’m adding a little rectangle to the bottom and then into the circle, I’m putting two big black ellipses, a little triangle underneath and then this becomes a skull and here’s my pirate’s flag. I hope this episode is not completely boring, because everybody just has to imagine, but you know how you can make it not boring is if you draw with us. So you should play this game as well. If you’re on your own, you can also play this game just with yourself – you just have to do every round yourself. But you could also try to imagine you have never seen what you just drew and completely reframe each thing with some absurd new information. Wow.

James Royal-Lawson
So now we have well three – it’s actually quite amazing how much we managed to do in these quick five steps.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
We have little stories. So here, I have got a tailor measuring a balloony man on a pirate ship saying ‘Shiver me timbers!’ All right.

Per Axbom
I have the water gun and packaging the Ant-Bubble Gun. It looks really exciting. I would buy it. It’s only $3. Creepy-crawly-tastic fun!!

James Royal-Lawson
I’ve got the scarecrow thing in the bird’s nest with the tiny bird shouting ‘Mummy!’ with its beak raised, wanting food. And you can see the nest and some clouds and there’s the tree. The nest is in the branch of the tree. And I’ve added there was a little hole – a knot in the trunk of the tree which was a hollowed out hole – and in that I’ve added a little kind of used to be called Chads – I don’t know if they’re still called Chads.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Oh, yeah. The guy with the nose over the wall.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. So their fingers and the nose, this kind of thing used to draw on walls and things back when I was…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
And I feel like this scarecrow thing, it basically looks like a bird-shaped Darth Vader. And I have like, you know, it says ‘I’m your father’ but it’s not the mummy, maybe it’s I don’t know. So you can see, there’s a lot of….

[giggling and laughing]

Eva-Lotta Lammb
So it’s like collaborative storytelling with random things that you would never have thought that you end up with.

Per Axbom
We would never have thought of anything like this this morning.

James Royal-Lawson
And I wrote that, ‘No, I am your father’ first. And now I’m doing my circle around.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
You learn fast.

James Royal-Lawson
And then my little line down to the scarecrow-like-father-Darth-Vader thing.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I’m just gonna finish and just repeat the steps that we took because I want to write them down. So you can see it on this piece of paper that you hopefully can look at somewhere on this page. So we had the random shape and the details to make it an object. Then we’re adding interaction. Then we’re adding context. So background. Then we’re adding language to give more information, speech bubbles, titles, signs, anything stickers with language on. And six, anything that is missing.

James Royal-Lawson
We went to six steps in the end.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. And this is kind of a fun little exercise to just have a random game of creating something that you didn’t….

Per Axbom
For collaboration and working with people that you often work with, just to see what happens, and to acknowledge how much you can do together even if you’re not feeling up to it all. I’m not feeling creative at all today, but it becomes extremely….

James Royal-Lawson
And the support. I mean, the thing about not worrying and we’ll solve this together.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
You can also see how much influence you can have by contributing something, you know. I don’t have to be the boss of saying, ‘Oh, the concept is that we’re going to draw Darth Vader having a baby bird son’ or something. But it’s by, step by step, actually creating and designing something and adding something by adding your contribution – even if it’s small – you can steer things in a direction and make a proposition. And then the next person that that picks it up can decide if they want to go along with your proposition, or if they want to add something else, which is basically the process of improvisation. And in my opinion, also the design process. Because very often, we also have to try things out, you know, I have to, I have to write mummy there to kind of get the idea of ‘No, it’s not the mummy, it’s the father.’ You know, it’s like, I am a person who is very bad at imagining images in my head. Some people are great when you tell them close your eyes and imagine a beach, they can they see the full scene, I basically see foggy darkness with kind of maybe, you know, like a beach at midnight where you can’t quite see what’s going on.

I can’t imagine images in my head. That’s why I have to draw them and I have to draw something. And then it’s like, ‘Oh, this is what it looks like, this is not what I want, or this is what I want or this is missing.’ And I think some people think you have to have a clear picture in your head and then just spit it out through the pen. That’s one way, for some people it works. But I think for most people, it’s a conversation with what you draw. It’s a conversation with yourself on a piece of paper and you make it easier for yourself by just making a fact on the piece of paper. If it’s just a squiggle, and then you make a next fact of, ‘Oh, I’m gonna put the beak somewhere.’ I have no idea where the eyes are gonna be or what the bird is doing, but by just putting a beak you give yourself more information to work with. And that’s true in design as well, you know, we have to start somewhere. You give yourself some information of ‘Oh, I’m going to place the key visual on my website here. And then I see how I place all the other stuff around and how I arrange things.’

Per Axbom
Once you place something the other things will come.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, layers and depth. And when you said about the use of colour at the beginning, that we can use the coloured pen to add layers and so on. And that’s what we basically have done. We’ve added multiple layers of information and iterated our way up to something that’s kind of complete or at least complete for now.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah and it’s a little story. And if you want to do a bonus, there’s a bonus thing that you could do with it. We’re not gonna play it through now because… but if you wanted to go into storytelling, you could take that the scene that you just created, take a new piece of paper and actually draw three boxes like a comic strip with three images, you know, you will draw three rectangles across your picture as if you wanted to draw a comic strip. And then you would draw a simplified version of the scene that you just drew into the middle picture, your scene goes into the middle picture. And then on the left, you draw what just happened before. And on the right, you draw what happened after. And that, that basically takes it into a little storytelling exercise, because now you have the middle scene. Usually, it’s quite dramatic, because we try to make it dramatic. So we need a little intro of what happened before how did we get to this thing? And then also resolution what happened after. That’s a nice little addition to it.

James Royal-Lawson
We take it towards the journey instead.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
This is this is a snapshot – usually it’s a dramatic snapshot, because we try to make it funny. And then, I don’t know, I have this guy measuring the guy on the on the pirate ship, I could think about what happened before. How did they get onto this ship? Who’s this person? You know? And then also afterwards, what happens afterwards? Does he get a new coat? Or? Or is he gonna throw him into the water? Or is he gonna strangle him?

James Royal-Lawson
Or walk the plank.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, so. Exactly. That’s a that’s another thing, how you could extend this exercise.

Per Axbom
Absolutely wonderful. I am blown away by what we created in that short period of time.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Well, I told you yesterday, I wanted to do an experiment, which is kind of a little bit out there, because I haven’t tried it, but it could be fun. So it’s basically because this format, you haven’t seen anything, what we’ve been drawing, unless there’s a page where you could actually see the pictures and you looked at them. Now we’re going to actually use this into a little exercise. And we’re actually gonna try – one person gets a photo and they are trying to describe the photo just with words, and the other two are gonna draw and you hopefully listeners are gonna draw as well. So it’s a little exercise for the person who’s describing of thinking about what is important in this photo and how do you describe it to make it easy for the people to draw it? How much detail do you actually need? And for the people just to trust and draw. Okay, who wants to describe?

James Royal-Lawson
I can describe.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay, I prepared some pictures. Let me see. Let me see where these pictures are.

James Royal-Lawson
Eva-Lotta now is looking through her phone to find pictures.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, not personal pictures. Okay, good. So this is the picture. Let me just rotate it so you can actually see it. I only have it on my phone, I’m really sorry but I hope it’s kind of good enough. Let me just preview image. Okay, I hope you can… you can see it. Yeah, I have already seen the picture but I will imagine not to have seen it. We’ll draw it.

Per Axbom
And I have not seen it.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay, just what shall we draw?

James Royal-Lawson
Is there any limitation on the kind of language I can use to describe it?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
No. No obscene language.

James Royal-Lawson
Okay, yeah. Fair enough.

Per Axbom
That will prove difficult apparently.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay, what shall we draw first?

James Royal-Lawson
So it’s it’s a shop window. Just a single large pane window of, probably quite a large building, like department-store-like building.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I’m gonna draw window, a big shop window.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Because I can see stonework on the building. To the left and right – the building itself is made from rectangular blocks of stone. Sorry, details that come later that were important before. So they look kind of like dominoes without the dots that build up the walls either side of this window. And in the window is a poster – that fills the window almost. And it’s advertising some perfume. In the very centre of that poster is ‘Hermes Paris’ the words. No, there’s more. Yeah, Hermes Paris is what it says.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
And it advertises a perfume?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, and there’s a little bottle of perfume to the bottom right of the text, that’s in the very centre. So ‘Hermes Paris’ is centred horizontally and vertically in the middle of the poster. Okay.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
All right, I already it’s not quite what I did, but it’s mine is good enough. Okay.

James Royal-Lawson
And in the background of the poster, so the photo is the background to the poster. And the other main thing I can see is, is a figure of a person in the poster and they are they are stretched so that the top of their head is clipped at the very top of the poster. And it’s kind of like just it’s above the knee, they’re clipped to the bottom of the poster to give you an idea of how much of the poster the person fills. We see everything from forehead downwards. So, the top of the poster, the very top of the scalp is chopped off. And anything from halfway down the thigh is then chopped off at the bottom

Per Axbom
But you’re seeing the face?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, and they’re positioned to the left of the poster and they’re looking to the right. So if you have done, like you, Per, I can see you’ve done the Hermes Paris in the middle of the picture, then the the torso is exactly behind the H. That’s a lot of information.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay, I’m just drawing…

Per Axbom
Then you’re also revealing that you can see what I’m drawing.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
You don’t give him tips. I’m just… okay, I’m drawing a person from…

James Royal-Lawson
It’s interesting to kind of think about the speed of which I’m describing, because I’m realising that I have to describe certain things, and then I have to backfill. So I have to go back and give you information because I realised that ‘oh, you probably need to know that because you would have no idea what the positioning is.’ And I kind of I’m doing that because I can kind of see what you’re doing, you know, but I shouldn’t look, I’m stopping looking. Okay. Now. Yeah, I said it was a little bit you’ve got them. Okay, now I’m gonna go onwards to: Outside, in front of the building, there’s some details. And there’s a few different details. The significant ones are there’s a stepladder. So one of those ones you’d use for decorating or cleaning and things. It’s a six-step foldable ladder leaning against the building to the right hand side of the poster, or the window rather.

Per Axbom
Okay. Yeah.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay. To the right of the window with six steps.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, no, no, it’s not leaning against the window. It’s leaning against the stonework to the right of the window.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
123456.

James Royal-Lawson
And then, at the foot of the stepladder is a bucket. Now, I’m guessing it looks like there’s some kind of cleaning thing stuck in the bucket. Like, maybe a brush. Maybe. All you can see is the handle of it. It’s a yellow handle. But quite long, it’s probably 80 centimetres long. Maybe it goes up to the third step on the ladder, the brush that’s sticking out the bucket. Anyway, now I’m going into too much detail. And there’s a blank….

Per Axbom
I’m missing a lot. I’m realising as I’m hearing you – how many steps? Because you’re going ahead, I’m drawing as you’re speaking. And so I realised ‘Oh, he said the person was to the left in the poster,’ but I drew it in the centre.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
But then at some point, it’s good enough.

James Royal-Lawson
There’s actually what looks like a sheet or cloth. It’s not cloth, it’s too big for a cloth. It looks like a bit of a bed sheet kind of or something, it’s like dumped down by the side of the bucket. I guess it is used for wiping after you’ve cleaned. So like a window cleaner, for example. A big cloth but it’s not a small cloth.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
It’s a big cloth. I made a big cloth.

James Royal-Lawson
It’s to the left of the bucket, if you’re interested.

Per Axbom
This is so interesting.

James Royal-Lawson
Okay, we’ll give one more detail. And then, I think this is the window cleaner. I’m gonna call him a window cleaner. It’s a man. He’s leaning against the stonework to the left of the window. So he’s in front of the glass, and he’s leaning against the stonework, which is immediately to the left of the window. And he’s got a pair of white dungarees on and a black T shirt. Actually, he’s got a head – I’ve just noticed now – he’s got a headphone in his ear and his hands in his pockets.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay, man, man dungaree dungarees.

James Royal-Lawson
White dungarees, hands in pockets, leaning, tattoos on his forearms. Oh, yeah, He’s got a t shirt on. Yeah, he has got more clothes on than just dungarees. He has got a black T-shirt on. And so you can see his forearms. I can see that both forearms. have tattoos on. He’s just leaning against the the stonework to the left of the window.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
And what kind of tattoos, like indistinct?

James Royal-Lawson
Trom here, they’re detailed tattoos because they look very much just like tattoo ink, on the on the size I can see of the picture. If I zoom in a bit… no… I can’t tell you much about what they are. He’s gazing off, out of the frame, into the distance

Per Axbom
That’s too late.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
What kind of style does he have?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, hedoesn’t have much. To be honest, it’s been like, like Per. He’s got short shaved hair. Yeah. And I think he’s talking on the phone to someone. He’s probably having a break between moving off from this window into another window. And I think I’ve probably run out of things to say.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Okay, good.

James Royal-Lawson
Listeners will be shocked.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Just put more stonework in here because now he’s leaning in front of my stonework. Okay. Now,

James Royal-Lawson
Of course, we said that Per has not seen this picture whatsoever. Eva-Lotta has seen the picture but hasn’t been working from the picture while we’ve been doing it.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Because I chose it. I have seen the picture. But I have to say – me having seen the picture – I am completely baffled by how you described it. Because the first thing I would have said is there’s a man leaning on a wall.

Per Axbom
Exactly, because…

Eva-Lotta Lamm
But he starts with a Paris poster that is kind of behind glass in the background of the thing, but it’s amazing – what we see and how we see it. And it’s like…

Per Axbom
That’s what I was thinking as well. Because as soon as you said there’s a person there, also, but the person is the thing that I would see first.

James Royal-Lawson
Absolutely. But thing is, what I was trying to do, I think, is – because I could see the disposition of things on the picture – I’m seeing the elements I’m gonna have to describe. And it dawned on me that if I describe one of the detail elements, it’s going to dominate your picture, because I’ve started with it. And because the poster in the in the window is the thing taking the biggest bit of this picture. I thought I’m gonna start with that, because you’re probably going to give it the most place on the picture. Yeah,

Eva-Lotta Lamm
I mean, there’s no…

James Royal-Lawson
I’ll reveal the picture to Per now.

Per Axbom
Oh, very nice. Yeah.

Per Axbom
Yeah, but it’s… Oh, there’s the cloth.

James Royal-Lawson
I’ll reveal the picture to Eva.

Per Axbom
I realise you said headset. But then, but then I heard you say, ‘Oh, he’s speaking on the phone.’

James Royal-Lawson
It was the headset that made me realise he’s probably speaking on the phone. And Per didn’t put the hands in the pocket, because I said that after you’ve drawn the arms,

Per Axbom
And his looking to the side, also, you said after we started…

James Royal-Lawson
Exactly. So the sequence, so the the reveal. So you say, Eva-Lotta, you were surprised that I started… I mean, I think I was kind of right to start with the window. But you can see later on that by forgetting to say hands in pockets, I should have started with ‘man with hands in pockets.’ But then how do I second guess what you’re going to presume, in that little moment of time before I move on to the next detail?

Eva-Lotta Lamm
It’s not about… don’t know what this exercise is about, because I just wanted to try it out and see what kind of questions come and say, ‘Is it important?’ And what is important? You know, is it important where he looks? Or is his expression important? Are the details important? I mean, everybody sees something different in it. But it was it’s just an interesting exercise.

James Royal-Lawson
I think it’s a really, really valid and interesting exercise. Because you think about the design process.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Like gathering requirements – the customer says, ‘You should have looked to the left.’

James Royal-Lawson
Like when you receive a screen or a sketch or a Figma file. But maybe you weren’t the one who actually created it. I didn’t take that photo, I have now got to describe this photo to you, too, who are my developers effectively,

Eva-Lotta Lamm
It’s actually a lovely metaphor, and I haven’t thought about it. But by starting to draw things out as you gather requirements, the question comes up, because when I asked you ‘What is his hairstyle?’ or you know, you could also ask ‘Where is he looking?’ Because when you start visualising things, you notice the gaps, because you have to make a decision of where this person looks and what he wears. And what he does.

James Royal-Lawson
Yes and fantastic. And we always talk about iteration and okay, well, maybe we’ll fix that in the next sprint. But here we can see that because of how we’ve described, or maybe flaws in how we’ve described, we’ve baked in problems that are maybe bigger than they needed to be.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah. And you discover them straight away, because now you look at his picture and you say, ‘No, but he’s looking to the left, he should look to the left.’ And it’s like oh, okay, he should look to the left… or there should be a search button… or there should be an autofill or whatever.

James Royal-Lawson
But a simple adjustment to how I describe something could save us an awful lot of time and even several iterations because, well, if I now say it’s a man with hands in pockets, wearing dungarees, I can reformulate that I’ve kind of conveyed the information better,

Per Axbom
And somebody would have to describe it back to you for you to know that they hadn’t understood when you said.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
So I mean, we don’t have to put it to the extreme that we do the blind thing, but it’s an interesting way to see that actually, yeah, I always find that when I start mapping out stuff with people and visualise it, there are questions coming out so quickly, because by drawing it, you have to make decisions about position, about size, about orientation. And without this information, you can’t do it. And therefore you have to ask. So it’s a really good process to to draw out questions that you might otherwise forget, because language is so flexible and nice and squishy. So yeah. Well, thank you for trying out those exercises. Yeah. And I’ve never done it with anybody. And it’s so much fun.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Thanks for letting us be your guinea pigs in this one. It was really, really good fun. And, well, yeah…

Per Axbom
We will be posting all this, of course, on our show notes.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, there’ll be lots of images in the show notes. And thank you a huge amount Eva-Lotta, for letting us have so much fun now.

Eva-Lotta Lamm
Yeah, doing a visual podcast without anybody seeing anything.

Per Axbom
That’s amazing. It’s amazing.

James Royal-Lawson
That was just so much fun. I’ve got a smile all over my face from listening back to that workshop thing we did with Eva-Lotta. And I can tell you, I did actually buy some of the magic wands for filling in, because that was just so mind blowing how putting little grey borders on stuff just makes it so much better.

Per Axbom
And I’m definitely gonna be stealing this last exercise for any workshop I’m doing where people have to describe an image – or describe anything really – and have other people create an artefact out of that description.

James Royal-Lawson
I think all three of the exercises we did during this show can be used in many different ways with people you work with, whether they’re as kind of warmups or onboarding, team building, whatever. They’re, they’re all very useful.

Per Axbom
Definitely.

James Royal-Lawson
And recommended listening. Of course, it has to be our previous chat with Eva-Lotta.

Per Axbom
One of my favourite episodes, obviously.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, of course it is. It’s really a valuable episode. Eva-Lotta goes through a lot more detail about visual thinking and how it can be useful and what you can do. It’s episode 234 of UX podcast.

Per Axbom
Remember to keep moving.

James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
Per. My friend got some camouflaged roller skates.

Per Axbom
Your friend got some camouflaged roller skates?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, she can hide but she can’t run.

Per Axbom
That’s just weird.