Playful Participation: How Pen, Provocation, and Personal Touch Boost User Engagement in Workshops

Abstract

Based on a case from industry, we describe the use of graphic facilitation to boost participant engagement in workshops. With design sketching as our point of departure, we describe and exemplify the use of graphic facilitation and reflect on its relevance for supporting a playful environment and how it impacts user participation in a professional learning situation.Furthermore, we provide guidelines for practitioners on how to efficiently use graphic facilitation in situations where engagement, learning, and reflection are essential. The guidelines include using a personal style of sketching as opposed to generic icons, producing large numbers of sketches directly in front of the audience in real time, and contextualizing learning points in humorous ways, such as through re-framing and exaggeration.