When Words Fail, Pictures Speak: Healing Professional Tensions Through Design
Running a Prototype Session with an Ex-Colleague
Have you ever imagined confronting someone at work but it just ran as a word-loop going nowhere? Pawel Jarmołkowicz, an innovation expert, and myself, a visual thinker, decided to run an experiment: re-connect and reflect on a tricky project we had both worked on almost a year ago. Less a study and more of an informal investigation, we wanted to test how visual thinking techniques might improve this conversation as well as use it as an opportunity to share perspectives and bring healing. Is it better to "leave sleeping dogs lie"? Anything worthwhile feels risky, but I had previously seen Pawel's good heart, learning mindset, and grounded motivation and felt a basis of trust.
Introduction
This article will share the process: the intentions; a series of collaborative exercises; the culminating intense moment of friction; my insights and reflections and guide for running your own version. In summary, we found that a visual approach can create a sense of light playfulness, shared humanity, and empathy for each other's challenges. There is potential for these to build psychological safety. However, the limitations are that additional resources are needed for trust building and emotional processing before and after more sensitive encounters.
Approach
To set up, we had a call to explore the approach in theory. After testing various tools and platforms, it was agreed to work on Miro, a virtual whiteboard, for the main call, as we are familiar with it, lending itself to visual work by design. We scheduled a 1.5-hour session on Zoom and did not consider a third-person facilitator. The existing trust meant that I could design the session to accelerate pretty quickly from the safety zone to the in-depth zone of the last exercise.
Intentions when Planning the Activities:
Reduce friction and cognitive load as much as possible and create a smooth pathway
Avoid sketching to prevent distractions from differences in drawing ability
Switch from left brain to right brain to sidestep engrained concepts and open up imagery
Check our understanding of events and see if our memories aligned
Allow for a wider conversation about how workplace structure affected our working relationship
Explore how we both perceived the same moment, diving into what happened and what was observed
Ethical Considerations
Both of us are now working independently and have the freedom to share openly. We are aware that a portion of the conversation mentioned other people who are still in the team and company. Where you see grey boxes in the illustrations, these were other people's animal avatars. Anyone familiar with the project could easily recognize themselves and each other, so they have been redacted, despite the obvious playfulness.
The Session
Warmup Exercise 1 -- Expressing Inner Aspects of Ourselves in a Playful Way
We selected an animal avatar to represent ourselves on the board. Animals are fun and cute but hold deep symbolic meaning. The intention was to share our identity within the project and allow us to mention others as well.
I picked the goldfish, "I felt like I was in a strange underworld universe in a way like I didn't really belong". Pawel chose the whale, describing himself as big and a bit clumsy, but capable of shielding the team and helping them create space to deliver their best work. "I was trying to navigate a difficult path between conflicting interests and needs of many different stakeholders"
Timeline Exercise 2 -- Making and Sharing Our Stories Through Feeling Metaphors
We placed our avatars and book-ended start and finish points, creating a visual narrative across the months using weather images. This exercise traced emotional experiences quickly at a high level, ranging from pleasant to hazardous. We shared our experience as a story, connecting with the challenge points as well as the achievements.
I added a flood to represent the overwhelming information and chaos, describing "the central zone of chaos like a pillar". Pawel said "it was very foggy I felt that I'm joining a big project, with a lot of people" when he was uncertain about the project's details and team dynamics when he first joined.
We then added a blue star to locate the most intense moment and discovered that our perspectives coincided.
Shape Exercise 3 -- Understanding How We Were Shaped by the Situation
We used shapes to show our positions relative to the rest of the team. The shapes revealed the dynamics of top-down managerial pressure and the designer's experience in the production line.
Pawel felt caught between different structures, like a funnel with pressure from above, while trying to unite the team. I felt clamped and protective of the UX team, describing myself as a small go-between amid the surrounding chaos.
Information emerged as a key theme. "There's a thick kind of fog around me, and I'm trying to find my way around it." Pawel was motivated to pass along the right information, filtered and contextual. Similarly, I was driven to filter and protect the design team from being overwhelmed by unnecessary details: "I knew that I didn't want the design team to have to put up with being flooded"
Concentric Circles Exercise 4 -- Exploring Perceptions
I had to see myself through the eyes of Pawel and others in this situation, which was uncomfortable: I had to face my skill limitations and how that impacted perception of my competence. It was only with trust and mutual humility that I could be confronted with this, which had been obscured by the chaos. Being excellent in some areas of work doesn't automagically bring it elsewhere without intentional training and mentoring.
This exercise was the culmination of our session and zoomed us from a wide structural view down to a specific moment in time. We shared two views of one meeting. It brought up feelings and empathy and discomfort and like a mirror, had an illuminating but clear revealing effect. Pawel drew a metaphor of his intention coming into the session, and I pulled on the weather metaphors. We agreed after that having a pre-existing visual language to pull from here would be useful.
Wrap Up
We reflected on the value of this approach: creating an artifact as an aide-mémoire, seeing our stories concurrently, understanding each other in new ways, and gaining broader perspectives.
Personal Reflection
Afterwards, I saw how I had not processed everything that had happened last year. I underestimated how much emotion would come up, including anger, which I needed to navigate and alchemise. It's healthy to claim my narrative and role, especially within engineering cultures that have deep-set overstories. I see how a reticence to voice myself lead to misunderstanding and inaccurate judgement. To hear how others perceive you in a situation is uncomfortable but allows for growth.
We were both participants and facilitators, which meant the sessions were co-created and empowering, but also I find that I had to switch my brain between modes within the session. Re-reading the transcripts I see that I didn't input as much as I thought and have spent longer than foreseen to process and write up what was going on for me.
Renewal of Purpose in My Practice
This experimental conversation opened my eyes to how difficult conversations can be held. It's possible for people to feedback on each other in a playful or less serious way. It's possible to design the game rules of the dialogue. It's possible for us to have new perspectives of others. My motivation to offer one-to-one visual consultation has deepened.
Limitations of Visual Thinking
· Surfacing misunderstandings can be difficult and turbulent
· Emotions and conflict are highly sensitive and need careful handling
· Trust building takes time; visuals can help, but continuous care is required
Design Principles to plan a Dialogue without Tension
1. Build Trust: Affirm existing relationships or shared humanity
2. Stay on Track: Use familiar, comfortable tools
3. Break Hierarchy: Co-create the conversation and reflect iteratively
4. Ditch Mental Jargon: Use natural, archetypal metaphors
5. Build Bridges: Design connection through stories
6. Honour the Experience: Check in with care and tell your own story
Read more here: www.boandco.ie/virtual-consulting
Read Pawels account of the experiment here