Brainstorming: Brainstorming is often
used to generate ideas about the problems
and potential solutions of the work situa-
tion. Because rich pictures can be drawn
“on the fly” during a brainstorming ses-
sion, ideas can be captured without unduly
disrupting or constraining a necessarily cre-
ative, unstructured process. Rich pictures
here present an alternative to the multitude
of sketches and doodles that participants
often walk away with from brainstorming
sessions. A rich picture helps everyone
involved in its construction to take a con-
sistent view of the problem situation with-
out demanding that they all agree on what
the problem is. Multiple conflicting con-
cerns can be captured in the pictures as
shown in Figures 1–3.
Storyboarding: Storyboarding is often
used to describe the flow of, for example,
the users’ activities so that they can be
reviewed and evaluated by both designers
and users. Rich pictures can provide an
elegant adjunct to a connected series of
storyboards by representing, in a single
abstract summary, the major structures
and flows, at an organizational level, rele-
vant to a work situation. Rich pictures
here present a supplement to the flow
charts and procedural descriptions often
used to connect the separate episodes of a
story.