The drawing method

The Drawing Method is a way for groups of people or individuals to provide their ideas in a more creative way.

This group engagement activity promotes creative thinking and teamwork.
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PURPOSE:

To engage and educate participants about site design and receive feedback on what they imagine the site to look like.

DESIGN PHASE:

Vision and goals
Site Exploration
Program development
Co-design
Design evaluation
Implementation

MATERIALS NEEDED:

Posters with aerial images, site photos, a key, and example images
Markers, colored pencils, crayons, and other writing utensils

PREFERRED FORMAT:

This engagement activity works best in an in-person setting with either a focus group or a workshop. This will allow participants to explain what they want through drawings. (Estimated time: ~1 hour)

SUGGESTIONS:

Provide engaging but meaningful graphics that display the goal of the project.
It might be beneficial to include more than one group of people to fully understand what the community wants.

The drawing method, site plan-focused, is a process where individuals or groups of people can uniquely illustrate what is important to them for a specific site. This method is an in-person activity that includes a poster with a blank site plan, an example of graphics (plan-view trees, groundcover, buildings, etc.), and example master plans. With this, the participants can understand what the idea is for the drawing activity, and they will be able to use their imagination with markers, colored pencils, crayons, etc. to convey their opinions thoughtfully. This is useful to the site's design process because it engages the users in a more meaningful and expressive way, and it allows the designer to implement and experiment with those ideas. Thus, forming a design that is aesthetic yet functional for the users and the site itself.

How-to

Find out who your users are. How old are they? Is it a large or small group of people?
Gather your materials. Posters, of any size, should be printed out with a blank plan view of the site and plan view examples. Participants will need a selection of markers, colored pencils, or crayons to demonstrate their ideas.
Explain who you are and what you are trying to achieve. Explain the objective of the activity. In this case, we want the participants to draw on the poster ideas they think will work best on the site.
Pass out posters and drawing materials to either individuals or groups of people, and give them enough time to generate thoughts and opinions into drawings. Make sure to walk around and listen to the conversations about the project.
After everyone is finished, place all the posters next to each other and reflect on all the drawings. Take note of repeated suggestions.
Have the individuals go around and take a look at all the posters. Have them tally on the poster which one is their favorite. This will help gain more insight as to what may be most important to the users.

Baldwin Grows Design Sheet that was handed out to students.

Sheet design by Avery Van Nus.

Case Example

At Baldwin County High School, faculty, community members, and students have had an ongoing garden project called Baldwin Grows. The Baldwin Grows garden site consists of three large tiers within a fence as well as significant design areas outside of the fence. To understand what the clients and students wanted for this garden, particularly the tiered garden, a group of University of Georgia students held an in-person engagement activity for the exploratory and envisioning phases of this project. In this engagement activity, the UGA students used a drawing method for the high school students to participate in to better visualize what they wanted for the community garden.

To prepare for this activity, the UGA students designed posters with a large aerial image of the site with existing elements already drawn in. On the bottom of the poster, there were examples of plan view elements that could be placed on the site including a tree, shrub, row crops, and more. To the side of the aerial plan, a series of existing site photos and examples of rendered master plans were included to give the Baldwin Grows students an idea of what they could place on their plan. During the engagement activity, the Baldwin teachers split the agriculture class into groups and the UGA students handed out 8 posters, markers, and other drawing utensils. The class was given about 30 minutes to work with their groups to come up with ideas and draw their designs. After the 30 minutes was up, the class went around and looked at each of the posters and tallied which one was their favorite.

This drawing method was effective in engaging the Baldwin High School students, and it opened them up to learn more about their school garden and even Landscape Architecture! It was useful in understanding where the students wanted certain design aspects to be, but it was not as useful in gaining a lot of specific ideas as to what they wanted those areas to have. More ideas could not be implemented than ideas that could given how elaborate some of the drawings were. However, some students did mention they wanted a lot of food-friendly plants and even a birdbath which was very helpful in the UGA student’s design process. In the future, maybe the same drawing method can be implemented but allow for the students as well as the faculty members to participate to see more specifics of what they envision for the site.

Examples of student design work from Baldwin County High School.

Lessons Learned

After giving the activity out to the Baldwin High students, we noticed that a lot of students were not as engaged as others. This prevented us from actually understanding what the students wanted to see in the garden; however, this shows that there may be times when we need to include other groups of people not just one.
This method is very useful for a younger audience, but it could also be useful for the faculty and staff.
To make this method successful, it is very important to have engaging graphics and thoughtful guidance throughout. Many of these participants have never done this before, and it is important to stay organized and properly explain the activity.

Sources:

Experience UGA

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