Process

Process

Pick a Picture is conducted in rounds. Each round has a reflecting individually phase and a sharing phase.

• Reflecting individually phase
  • This is the time for looking through images and selecting the ones (1 to 5) that we each feel personally drawn to.
  • While looking and selecting, participants may also stop to reflect on the images they selected.  Also, sometimes players choose to spend time rearranging the pictures in meaningful ways, though this is optional. Participants will be told when 2 minutes are left in the reflecting individually phase, so they can make time for reflecting and rearranging if they want to.
• Sharing phase
  • In this phase, participants will take turns sharing some or all of the images they've selected.  Participants can choose to just share about the images themselves without having others in the group respond.  Or, they can choose to have everyone participate in talking about the image they've shared and what they've said about it.  Click here to read more about how we hold the space for the person who is taking a turn sharing.

Each round will include this process of selecting, reflecting, and sharing. What changes is the prompt to be used as a guide for selecting images. Here is an example of a prompt: Select images that speak to some aspect of _______( a current situation / a relationship / growth / love / work / caregiving / parenting ) that is alive for you.

Prompts

For each round, a prompt may be provided. You are invited to use the suggested prompt to guide which images you select for this round. Whatever the prompt is, we invite you to hold it lightly. The prompt is not a precise instruction to follow with a specific intention. The prompt just provides a suggested direction to head in, and if that leads you to a direction that holds more interest for you, that's great, too. Take it where you are drawn to go.

A default prompt you can always go with instead of the suggested prompt is to just see what images you are drawn to selecting, even if you don't know why you are drawn to them.

Examples of prompts:

• Select images that speak to something that you'd like to envision for yourself in the future
• Select images that make your nervous system say ahh
• Select images that remind you of someone important to you
• Select images that speak to where you are headed
• Select images that connect with how you feel, or how you would like to feel
• Select images that speak to something you're grappling with
• Select images that speak to some aspect of parenting that is alive for you
• Select images that speak to what you want more of in your life

Upholding how someone experiences a picture

Something that Pick a Picture drives home to me is that we each can see a picture in so many different ways. Each person can see something different from another person, and the same person can see something different at different points in time. This is something that makes the Pick a Picture experience very rich and interesting to me. Given that there are multiple ways of seeing a picture, we want to take care when a sharer is sharing a picture with the group. We want to uphold the sharer's experience of the picture, and go with them to where they want to take us as they share. For example, when someone was talking about a picture of one seal lying against another seal, someone else said that it wasn't another seal, it was a rock. It doesn't matter what people would generally agree upon seeing in the picture. If the sharer sees another seal, then it's another seal.

(This doesn't mean that another person can't take a turn with the picture if they feel moved to talk about a different way of experiencing it that is meaningful to them. If they want to do so, they can become the sharer of the picture after the original sharer feels complete, and take their own turn with the picture.)

To do beforehand to get prepared for a session (or come 15 minutes early to the session and we can do this together)

• Watch the Miro Navigation Basics 3-minute Video.

• For the rest of the items in this list, you'll be using a Miro board that I've set up for people to practice with (so don't worry about keeping it exactly the way it was before you began). Here's the link for it: meaningfulaction.org/sandbox
  • It's recommended that you use Chrome version 1.8614.0 or higher or Firefox. There is also a Miro desktop app that you can download and install, but the problem with pictures disappearing and reappearing that's mentioned below isn't any better with the desktop app.
  • Clicking "No, thanks" is my suggestion for when a window pops up that says "Welcome to Miro! You will be using this board as a Visiting Researcher. Complete a quick tutorial to learn how to use basic tools." For our purposes, nothing in the tutorial is relevant, as we'll only need to know how to do what's listed here below.

• Select a picture - The arrow icon at the top of the toolbar (on the left hand side of the screen) toggles between select mode and pan mode. In pan mode, your cursor will look like a hand and you will be able to pan around the board to navigate around it. In select mode, your cursor will look like an arrow. In this mode, you point at things with the arrow and click on them to select them.

• Copy and paste a picture to a new location - Select a picture. Then, use Ctrl+C/Ctrl + V for Windows or Cmd + C/Cmd + V for Mac.

• Drag a picture to a different location - Select and hold while you move your cursor to drag a picture. See if you can drag a picture to a different location. Then, drag it back to its original location.

• Note that pictures may disappear (and perhaps see if this happens to you and see if you can get them to reappear) - One very unfortunate thing that is currently true about Miro is that not all of the pictures will alway be showing. As you zoom in and out and navigate around the board, some of the pictures will disappear. Zooming in and out can help them to reappear.
  • This is a known bug for the Miro team. They are working on fixing it. In the meantime, here are their suggestions:
    • Close all unused tabs with Miro boards in your browser;
    • Open your browser settings and disable hardware acceleration (for convenience, please see third-party instruction: how to enable or disable hardware acceleration in a browser for a walkthrough on how to do this);
    • Refresh the active tab with the Miro board in your browser;
    • Make sure you are using Chrome version 1.8614.0 or higher.
    • Some users also reported that the issue appeared less in the Firefox browser, so you may try that as well.