Rich Pictures
Rich Pictures are a visual method for exploring and defining complex situations by creating a shared understanding through diagrams, symbols, and words. This collaborative approach helps teams surface diverse perspectives and identify key issues without imposing pre-determined structures.
Use Rich Pictures at the beginning of a project, review, or when designing a monitoring and evaluation system to foster a broad, shared understanding among diverse stakeholders.
Solves: Conflicting perspectives hindering collaboration, Lack of shared understanding of a complex problem, Difficulty articulating the nuances of a situation.
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Step 1: Introduce the concept of Rich Pictures and explain its purpose (5 minutes).
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Step 2: Provide a large sheet of paper or a digital whiteboard and ask participants to individually brainstorm elements of the situation (10 minutes).
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Step 3: As a group, begin drawing the 'rich picture' using symbols, pictures, and words to represent the key people, organizations, processes, and issues involved (60 minutes).
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Step 4: Each participant presents their contributions to the rich picture, explaining the key elements and linkages they've depicted (30 minutes).
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Step 5: Compare different perspectives and identify common themes and divergences to highlight critical issues for discussion (15 minutes).
- Encourage participants to use a variety of visual elements to represent their ideas.
- Ensure that all participants have an opportunity to contribute and share their perspectives.
- Remind the group that the goal is to capture the complexity of the situation, not to simplify it prematurely.
- Use different colored markers to represent different perspectives.
- Break the group into smaller teams to create separate rich pictures and then compare them.
- Incorporate CATWOE (Customers, Actors, Transformation, Worldview, Owner, Environmental Constraints) elements into the rich picture.