I’ve been meaning to write this for a while but after a really interesting conversation at TestBash, I decided to finally get something written down!
In June 2023 I attended Testing Atelier X and it included a workshop by Marianne Duijst on sketchnoting. I’ve seen some very attractive looking sketchnotes from many people, including the wonderful Louise Gibbs, however I didn’t get how people could take their notes, make them pretty and informative. I also didn’t entirely get the point. However I quite enjoyed the exercise and have since gone on to use this approach a lot when watching talks in my spare or personal development time.
The value that they bring is that you can provide a structure to your notes that makes them way more readable when you look back at them later. I rarely found my notes from talks to be worth looking back on in the past but since I’ve started sketchnoting, I’ve found myself picking them back up to remind me of the topics and key points. Importantly they are something that I could share whilst my previous scribbles in a notepad would be hidden (I used to intentionally write in such an illegible manner that only I could decipher the text).
I am no where near sharp enough to do them live but I’ve learnt some techniques:
- For live talks, consider post it notes or just quickly writing things in a jotter. Then revisit them later.
- Post it notes are great as you can reorganise them!
- If you’re able to pause, try and avoid stopping too often. Listen, absorb then rewind to take the notes.
- Avoid too much bloat to make it easy to parse.
- Focus on the speaker’s words rather than “oh I could go do this”.
- Don’t fret about being messy.
See more examples of people’s sketchnotes on the Ministry of Testing Club