Business designer, illustrator, trainer, author
Ben helps teams solve problems and generate winning ideas for strategy, products and services, with workshops, training, and drawing. Lots of drawing.
Books
Presto Sketching
A practical workbook for learning simple sketching skills (like people, faces, objects and scenes, storyboarding, journey mapping, and conceptual illustration) for better ways to explore problems, generate ideas, explain concepts, and persuade stakeholders.
Draw in 4
100 4-step sketches of various objects, animals and people — everything from lions to lava lamps — for you to try drawing, to boost your drawing confidence. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, this is a fun way to amp up your visual vocabulary.
50 Remote-Friendly Icebreakers
Say goodbye to boring meetings! This book is made for anyone who runs any kind of online meeting, with 50 different fun, insightful and intriguing activities to try with your group. Guaranteed not to contain any cheesy ones. Comes with a companion website.
Working
Ben is Principal at Bright Pilots, his business design consultancy.
Bright Pilots helps you and your team solve gnarly business problems, generate better ideas, and work out your purpose, your strategy, and your team values.
Ben does this using workshop activities and visualisations that combine the best of new (and old) ways of working – including Agile, Lean, Design Thinking, and Systems Thinking – plus dashes of discovery and novelty.
Speaking
Ben has two passions that he speaks about at conferences, events, and podcasts: drawing for work, and using design and facilitation to solve problems and envision better futures. Topics:
- Drawing for business strategy, user experience, persuasion and creativity
- Design Thinking for better innovation and team performance
- Unleashing creativity at work, in surprising and useful ways
Recent talks
- Good Design Awards 2023 Highlights
Sydney Design Thinking Meetup • October 2023 - State of the Design Nation: Highlights from the Good Design Awards Australia
Sydney Design Thinking Meetup • November 2022 - Webinar: Workshop Facilitation for Design Sprints
Terem Technologies • Feb 2020 - Conference talk: Bugfixing Your Mental Model
Agile Australia Conference • Jun 2019
Podcast interviews

First Time Facilitator
June 2023
Call the Game: Ben Crothers Shares His Tips on Being Bold in Your Next Workshop or Meeting

The New Way
December 2022
How To Use Visual Communication To Align, Collaborate And Share Stories with Ben Crothers

Prodpod podcast
October 2019
People, not Pixels - an interview by Adrienne Tan with Ben Crothers, brought to you by This Is HCD
Graphic recording
Ben helps make any event more impactful with live scribing. Seeing a talk or group conversation graphically recorded as it unfolds is highly engaging, and helps people connect with the content in more meaningful ways.
Whether in-person or online, analog on the wall or digital on an iPad, Ben captures what’s said in real-time, summarising on the fly.
Want to learn how? He teaches it too...
Drawing and illustration















See more sketchnotes and other illustrations at Ben’s Instagram accounts for himself, Presto Sketching, and Bright Pilots.
Writing
Ben writes on the Bright Pilots blog, and from time to time on the Presto Sketching blog, Medium, plus a few guest posts here and there. Recent posts:
- Best-voted ideas to keep your hybrid meetings from not sucking so much
Bright Pilots • Oct 2022 - An expert answers 15 design sprint questions
Terem Technologies • Feb 2020 - 5 cognitive bias examples and how to avoid them in decision-making
Atlassian blog • July 2019 - Sketch Crew students power up their future at AgileAus18 with sketchnoting!
Agile Australia blog • Jul 2018 - What agile retrospectives won’t improve, and what you can do about it
Atlassian blog • Jan 2016 - Fight the dark side of Lean UX with the Experience Canvas
Atlassian blog • Oct 2013
- The anatomy of great storytelling with Ben Crothers
Dovetail • Apr 2021 - Investing in design strategy means investing in greater confidence
designstrategy.guide • Apr 2020 - Mapping your user’s day with the User Clock Sketch
Presto Sketching • Jun 2019 - Add more creativity to your drawing with SNAILS
Presto Sketching • Aug 2018 - Visualising to see and solve problems
Frost Collective • 2018 - Want better ideas? Go to Crazytown
Medium • Apr 2015