How Does Ketso Work?

Ketso is hands-on, with colourful shapes to capture and display people's ideas.

Participants write their ideas and comments on re-usable, colour-coded 'leaves'.

Everyone has a pen and leaves, so everyone can develop and add their ideas.

Ketso in use

Leaves to generate and capture ideas

Participants write or draw their ideas on different coloured leaves. These can be used to ask different questions, such as:

What works?

What are the future possibilities?

What are the challenges?

What are our goals?


We have a tried and tested range of ways of using Ketso available for you to download for free here. These explain the thinking behind the colours and how the kit helps you to plan and effective workshop.

Participant input

Felt workspace to capture ideas

Participants place their ideas on a central felt workspace.

The leaves stick to the felt, but can easily be moved. This means that they can be re-arranged and clustered as the conversation develops. This builds a visual record of the discussion as it takes place.

The centrepiece shows the main focus of the workshop. It is like the trunk of the tree.

Participants see their ideas taking shape, encouraging cooperation and dialogue. The felt workspace can also be pinned up on the wall for display and discussion.

Felt and centrepiece

Branches to structure ideas

There are branches to help organise the ideas into themes.

Participants point their leaves at the relevant branches, which 'branch' off from the core trunk, or focus.

As the leaves build up around the branches, participants can see where there are a lot of ideas, and where there are gaps. Participants can also compare the ideas and how they are developing between different groups, learning from each other.

Being able to see the number and types of ideas clustered around the different themes also helps the facilitator analyse the results of the workshop.

We have examples of possible themes to use for branches here.

Deciding the themes

Icons to prioritise ideas

Icons are used to highlight key points. This allows participants to give each other feedback, and to prioritise ideas. 

Ideas can be developed into an action plan, using the Ketso Grid or the smaller Ketso Planner to organise the ideas into timelines.

Ketso has a highly flexible design that can be adapted to many different uses, based on its solid intellectual grounding in cutting-edge research at the University of Manchester.

Prioritising ideas

Kit can be used over and over

After the workshop, ideas can be typed up or photographed for a record of the results.

Ketso is a durable, re-usable kit. The leaves rinse clean in water, ready to be used again and again.

Ketso comes in a handy carrying bag, making it easy to transport.

For more detail on this process, see the Ketso User Guide.

Rinsing the kit