Roland Siegenthaler
In Roland’s early days as an electrical engineer, he felt that his clients never quite understood how his great ideas would work. This led to misunderstandings – and Roland hates misunderstandings. They kill creativity, lead to fights and cost us precious time. 15 years ago he discovered sketching as a fantastic tool to bridge this gap between experts and non-experts. By creating a picture, there’s suddenly a shared understanding in a team, there’s productivity and energy. Wonderful!
About the talks
Visualizing the Essence of an Idea (Workshop)
Working in a team and developing software is like playing in a band. you study your audience and try to deliver a concert to their taste. But most often there is just a fuzzy idea of what the audience might like. And also within the team, the ideas of what the audience will expect are far from aligned. The result is a somewhat disturbing performance and a shocked audience.
But how can we better explore and understand the context for which we design? How can we establish a shared vision of the content we want do produce?
With pictures of course! Communicating visually avoids misunderstandings and gets everyone on the same page.
The aim of this workshop is that you get rid of too high expectations and rediscover the joy of drawing and doodling. We will explore the power of pen and paper (or pen and iPad) and prove how you and your team will benefit from that skill.
So this is where they journey will take us…
To free you from your imagined «I can’t draw» condition, we use the following therapeutic approach:
1. It’s okay if it looks stupid.
2. We draw with professional pens.
3. With a few tricks, even talent-free artists can create great pictures!
Drawing is easy if you leave out 97% of the details. Figures don’t need hands and faces work without eyes. Cars don’t need rear-view mirrors and a bicycle doesn’t need pedals.
The most beautiful drawing is worthless if it misses the point. But how do you find a relevant image idea for «agile», «team player», «ambitious» or «efficiency»?
In this course, I will show you how to use examples and metaphors to transform even the most complicated terms into easily understandable and relevant images.
How can we explain complex relationships simply?
With infographics, of course! Our visual infographics go beyond boxes and arrows. Here, too, it’s about bringing images into play. This is the best way to tell a story that is understood and remembered.