In 140 characters

One-pagers are a tool to quickly summarize any given topic, easily created in a group workshop.

In 200 words

A one-pager contains a tweetable summary, a concise description, a compilation of further reading and an an illustration of the topic.
Using the workshop format, all of this will exist after one hour:

Start up

  1. Take 5 minutes to explain the general process.

Create Tweets

Use Brain-Writing:

  1. Grab a sheet of paper each; put an extra one in the middle.
  2. For 3 minutes, write a tweetable text on the topic, exchange your sheet with the excess one. Repeat.
  3. In 3 more minutes, swap sheets and read through all of them.
  4. In 4 more minutes, agree on a single text or compile one.
  5. Write it down on a fresh paper.

Create Details

  1. Grab a sheet of paper each.
  2. For 5 minutes, list bullet points for the various aspects of the topic.
  3. Hand your sheet to your neighbor.
  4. In 5 more minutes, select the entries you think are most valuable. The number to mark depends on the number of participants.
  5. In 5 more minutes, aggregate a list of most important points on a fresh sheet of paper. Add some front-matter text. Note some blog posts or books on the topic.

Illustrate

  1. Grab a sheet of paper each.
  2. In 10 minutes sketch an explanation of the topic.
  3. In 15 more minutes, look over each other’s drawings and select the best elements. Copy those elements on a fresh sheet or amend one of the existing pictures.

Wrap up

  1. In the 5 final minutes, hold a short presentation and wrap up the workshop.

Unlimited Info

Illustrated

The illustrated result.

Final remarks

I learned about this technique in Martin Heider’s workshop at play4agile 2014. Thanks, Martin!
The name “One-Pager” stems from the fact that you can pin all your results to a single sheet of A3 or flipchart paper.