Sketchnoting looks childish – can it really be used professionally?

This is the third article in my series of short pieces on common questions I receive when talking about Sketchnoting.

Sketchnotes are those hand drawn visuals which make use of a mix of words and simple pictures and graphics to convey ideas. They can be used to capture and share notes at conferences and meetings, to summarise detailed information or for planning and reflection. I have been Sketchnoting now for nearly 10 years and when I am Sketchnoting at an event people are always curious about what on earth I am doing and come to chat to me about it.  I have had many fascinating conversations with people about Sketchnoting, how it can be used and what the benefits are of using it. Most people are full of admiration, encouragement and want to have a go, but occasionally I come across someone who expresses their concern that Sketchnoting wouldn’t be seen as ‘professional’ in their organisation.

I am always intrigued by this – is it that their organisation really wouldn’t see a tool such as Sketchnoting as professional and if so, what does this say about the organisational culture? Or is it that Sketchnoting with its use of drawing and images and often colour doesn’t fit with that individuals’ perception of what it means to be a professional?  Does the playful nature of Sketchnoting sometimes seem too ‘childish’ to be compatible with professional work?

Superficially, Sketchnoting seems to be all about creating eye-catching and fun visuals, but for me the benefit of using Sketchnoting goes far beyond their immediate attractiveness. What is key to the value of Sketchnoting is the impact that using a well-designed visual has on the ease of understanding complex information and then in making this information memorable. Both of these qualities of visuals were identified by Allan Paivio, who wrote about how much more ‘computational efficient’ a visual is at making understandable complex information compared to written or spoken information. With a well-designed graphic you can take in the whole information at once, whereas you often have to read and re-read a written passage to connect up the information – this is known as ‘The Visual Argument’ (see image below).

The combination of words and visual also have the advantage of making use of dual coding, in that each of these is separately coded in the brain, but linked together, so that the memory is richer and easier to recall.
As professionals we need to be able to make sense of increasing amounts of information, weigh this up and apply it to our work rapidly. I think that any tool which can aid us to communicate complex information more efficiently and effectively and which also makes information and ideas easier to remember is worth a place in a professional toolkit. Sketchnoting does this, and more, so why not make use of it?

Rachel Burnham

4 October 2024

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.

 

Why do visuals work?

Rachel Burnham writes: A well-designed visual can be a powerful communication tool, which can be used to inform, inspire and as a guide to action.  They are a useful part of the toolkit for those in organisations, who want to communicate information & ideas, enable learning and support effective performance. 

So often visuals are used for purely decorative purposes – which is fine for plates and tea towels – but is a missed opportunity in learning.  And worse, using visuals purely for decorative purposes can be distracting and get in the way of learning by causing cognitive overload.  However, visuals used purposefully and particularly when used to explain are highly effective.

A well-designed visual can enable you to grasp the key points of a concept or process or practice all at once and also pick up details.   You can ‘see the big picture’ and also components within the main idea and how these fit together – it is ‘computational efficient’ compared to using just a written or verbal presentation.  An example of this is my recent Sketchnote on Psychological Safety, which in a single visual explores what this is, what it contributes too and what leaders can do to support this in their teams. When I shared this recently one person commented that this Sketchnote managed to set out on a single page, what others had taken 15 slides to explain.

The reason a well-designed visual works is that you are able take in all the key information synchronously ie at the same time, whereas written or spoken language is sequential and this requires you to work much harder to link the various pieces of information together. This is known as ‘The Visual Argument’ and comes from the work of Allan Paivio.

In addition, a visual is able to make use of the spatial arrangement on the page to convey elements of the information and we often find this an easy way to take in information, without having to work too hard for it.  For example, items physically closer together on the page are understood to be more closely related; arrows and location can indicate which items come first in a sequence; and bigger items are understood to be more important to physically smaller items.  

A well-designed visual can be particularly useful when you are new to a particular subject, as it helps you to build a mental model of the topic.   As you become more familiar, informed and experienced in a particular field, it becomes easier to build on and adapt your mental models to incorporate further details and nuances because you already have a sense of the area in question and can use your existing mental model as a scaffold to hook new ideas & information onto.  A great visual can help to shortcut this process.

Great visuals can also be useful if reading is not one of your strengths for example if you have dyslexia, or perhaps are working in a language that is not your first language.

Well-designed visuals can be used in many ways.  They could form the basis for a performance support tool – a practical guide to help people do a particular task or activity. They could be used as a way to present information & ideas and be accompanied by prompts to aid reflection & action.   A visual could be used as the basis for a discussion within a team or amongst a group of peers, as an alternative to a presentation.  The visual could be part of a wider package or stand alone.

 

If you would like to discuss more about how to use visuals effectively to aid learning, why not get in touch?   I am also working with Andrew Jacobs on a free Llarn Learning Clinic on Thursday 24 November 2022 at 11am on this subject – why not book a place? It would be great to see you there.

Rachel Burnham

3 November 2022

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.

 

6 Ways Students Can Use Sketchnotes to Aid Studying

 

Rachel Burnham writes: In this article, I want to share some of my experiences of how students can make use of Sketchnoting to aid them in their studying.

Sketchnotes are rich pictures, which you create yourself, that make use of a combination of both words and simple pictures.  There are many styles and approaches to Sketchnoting – in Sketchnoting there are no rules, it is about finding an approach that works for you.  For example, I like to make use of colour in my Sketchnotes, whereas Mike Rhode, who came up with the term Sketchnote in 2007, creates fabulous sketchnotes just using black ink.  Some people create Sketchnotes using a tablet & software, whereas I prefer paper and pens.

I have been using Sketchnoting for about 6 years and have introduced many people to Sketchnoting to aid their work, thinking and learning. I have worked with Learning & Development and HR professionals, engineers, digital marketeers, coaches, forensic scientists, geographers, university lecturers and many others including school and university students.  From this experience I have become convinced of the value of Sketchnoting to anyone who is studying, whether at school, college, university or for a professional qualification. 

Sketchnoting is a flexible tool that can help you to be more effective in the way you study.  It can be used to create memorable notes; to aid you in making sense of what you are learning; for planning your work including assignments; for reflection; when revising; and when communicating your ideas to others.  In addition, many people with dyslexia seem to find Sketchnoting a helpful approach to making notes.

One thing that concerns many people when they first hear about Sketchnoting, is the fear that you need to be good at art to be able to use Sketchnoting.  Fortunately, you don’t need to be able to draw to start Sketchnoting, as the drawings used are very simple indeed, which can be picked up quickly with a little practise and an open mind. 

In this blog, I want to explore practically how Sketchnoting can be used to aid learning.  As I do this, I will make links to the concept of ‘dual coding’ which is a well-researched approach to learning which has been extensively studied in cognitive psychology.  Dual coding essentially identifies that information which is presented with words and pictures is coded by the brain in two different but linked ways.  This means when you make notes using a combination of words and visuals, your brain creates linked memories, which you have a much better chance of recalling.   The power of ‘dual-coding’ is at the heart of what makes Sketchnoting effective.

Here are the 6 ways you can use Sketchnoting to help you study:

 

1.  Note-making

Sketchnoting can be used both for making notes of lectures and discussions, but also to summarise material studied through reading, watching videos or listening to recordings.   Sketchnotes enable you to make personal notes, that focus on the key points from the session, lecture or reading.  When making notes in a class or lecture it is awfully tempting to try and write everything down, but the very effort of trying to record everything, can mean that you almost stop thinking about what you are writing in the effort to capture it all. When Sketchnoting a lecture, talk or class, it is impossible to record everything, yet this apparent weakness, is one of the strengths of Sketchnoting. If you are Sketchnoting you do not attempt to record everything, just the key points, but because you are actively choosing which points to capture and which words & images to use, you stay focused and engaged.  When looking back at your notes, your memory is then triggered to recall additional detail not directly captured in your Sketchnote.  To get the full benefit of this, it is helpful to look back over your notes and actively seek to recall the full information.  If you do this, say the day after creating your notes, you will also gain the benefits of retrieval practice, which I will discuss in more detail when looking at revising.

You can also use Sketchnoting to summarise information gained from reading books & articles or from watching videos or listening to recordings.  Once again, the benefit of Sketchnoting over other forms of notetaking, is that it requires you to think through and actively identify which are the key points to record. 

  

2.  Connecting ideas and thinking things through

Often when studying a subject it helps to think about how the different aspects of that topic link together to deepen and broaden your understanding. You can use Sketchnoting to help you do this, by creating a Sketchnote that shows the connections between the topics.  If you are researching a topic, you can use a Sketchnote to show the relationships between the information you have gathered. 

 For example, I was researching with a colleague the ways that virtual reality (VR) could be used to facilitate training in the workplace – we talked to experts, read articles and tried out different VR applications ourselves.  We realized that one way of making sense of all the different ways of using VR was to consider how much the different VR apps immersed learners and so we arranged all the uses we had come across along a rating scale of the degree of learner immersion and I drew the following Sketchnote to illustrate this. 

Leonardo Da Vinci, who was not only an amazing artist but interested in a wide range of scientific subjects, used to carry out ‘thought-experiments’ in which he regularly sketched out pictures illustrating ideas he was exploring such as wave patterns, light & the moon, river eddies and added notes alongside them.  Effectively he was Sketchnoting! Some of his notebooks still exist today and so you can see how he did this.  

 

3.  Planning

Sketchnotes can be used very flexibly to aid you plan all kinds of work tasks including assignments, presentations and projects.  When using Sketchnoting for planning, I often create much messier and more unfinished looking Sketchnotes than for other purposes – I rarely keep them beyond the need for the immediate task.  Here is an example of a Sketchnote I created when preparing a presentation on Networking:

One of the advantages of using Sketchnotes for planning is that you can begin with whatever ideas first come to mind and you can then go back and decide the order in which you tackle the tasks or the order in which the sections go.  In this respect, Sketchnoting has some similarities to MindMapping, though there are many more options about how you lay out your Sketchnote.

 

4.  Reflecting

Many courses encourage you to carry out reflection during your time of study, perhaps as preparation for using reflection as part of continuing professional development (CPD) in a work role. It may even be an integral part of the whole course or a requirement within one or more assignments to carry out a reflection.  The idea behind reflection is to take time to learn from experiences (whether those experiences involve doing an assignment, carrying out a task, doing some research or from a life experience) by identifying  what went well and why, what could be improved and what you will do to be even more effective in the future.  This process of reflection may make use of a model such as Gibbs' reflective cycle (1988).

Reflection can be done and recorded in many ways, in the form of a journal, a blog, through a video recording, through a professional discussion with an assessor.  Sketchnoting can also be used to record your reflections.   Some people find that this is an alternative approach that works for them in a way that other methods don’t.  Others have commented that it allows them to slow down and reflect more deeply and for this reason they find it more effective.

   

5.  Revising

One of the powerful lessons from cognitive psychology is how to revise effectively. Often when revising people use the approach of reading and rereading their notes.  Many experiments have shown that it is more effective to use an approach called ‘retrieval practice’, in which you study a topic and then return to it and rather than study the same material again, instead actively try to bring the material back to mind – this could be through questions posed by a tutor or teacher or fellow student or jotting down what you remember from the topic or you could create a Sketchnote of what you recall.   Once you have done this you can then check back against the original study material, to check for any errors and also fill in any gaps.   This method of revising is highly effective even if you find that you struggle to recall much material at first.  But when you return to it again, you will have reinforced the links to the correct and full information far more effectively through that process of struggle.

If you allow some time to elapse between revisiting the material in this way, you will also tap into the benefits of ‘spaced practice’, another well evidenced learning practice from cognitive psychological research. If you are interested in finding out more about ‘dual coding’, ‘retrieval practice’ and ‘spaced practice’ it is worth checking out The Learning Scientists Podcast for easy to understand explanations and examples.

 

6.  Communicating your ideas

Finally, Sketchnotes can be used as a way of presenting your ideas, perhaps within a seminar or session or even in an assessment.  Some courses make use for example, of academic posters for presenting ideas and Sketchnoting would be an excellent way of producing one. 
 
These 6 ways of using Sketchnoting all come from experience and make use of what we know is effective in learning.  They are all practical ways of adding to your study skills and enabling your study experience to be both effective and enjoyable. If you think that Sketchnoting could help you with your studying this year, why not learn to Sketchnote?

 

Rachel Burnham

2 September 2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.