Guest blog: overcome challenges with visual thinking

Visual Thinking, photo credits:
tfyn, soldierant, driki, XPLANE

For an organization operating on the innovative edge of any industry one of the biggest challenges has always been effectively communicating what their business does, or what its value proposition is. Through my experience as a consultant and entrepreneur I’ve encountered this challenge on an almost continuous basis. I’ve sat in countless boardrooms, around restaurant tables and in dimly lit bars going back and forth with partners, co-workers or clients trying to describe the problem we solved.

It wasn’t until I attended Visual Thinking School, a seminar put on by Dave Gray (founder of XPLANE) as part of MaRS’ ongoing event series that I began to realize that perhaps our biggest obstacle wasn’t the message, but rather the choice of medium. Up until that point our thought process started out by immediately trying to put words on paper. At its root, Dave’s philosophy is to step back from the words and instead use visual means to facilitate the thought process, or as he calls it, Visual Thinking.

Next time you start out to define a process, concept or even an interface, consider starting with the basic elements, or nodes, of what it is you really do. How do they relate to each other? How does a “userâ€? move through the process of interacting with your nodes. It’s these types of exercises that really lay at the foundation of Visual Thinking – rather than using 1,000 words to describe what you do, consider aiming to create an image, or series of images that depict what you do.

It’s important to remember that what you see from companies like XPLANE is the product of visual thinking, not the process, and it’s the process that’s really innovative. In any given day I may work on solution specifications, interface designs or even marketing ideas and diagrams. Many of these use the premise of Visual Thinking but almost none of it ever ends up in a finished, polished form. Usually it doesn’t need to–at the end of the day, Visual Thinking is really about discovery.

Visual Thinking is about the journey, not the destination – I’m constantly amazed by what we encounter, discover and learn when working through issues around the office using the tools that Visual Thinking offers. Sometimes it’s as simple as finding a minor interface or process issue, other times it completely changes how we share our ideas with others. It doesn’t require any special artistic skill, just the ability to let loose and really play with your ideas, beyond the boundaries of words – and best of all, the knowledge is free.

The following links will help you get a better idea of the philosophy & ideas behind visual thinking:

• An Introduction to Visual Thinking
• Visual Thinking School on Squidoo
• Visuallanguageproject.com
• Visual Thinking Flickr Group

For those in the Toronto area, a new community is forming around Visual Thinking called “VizThinkâ€?. If you want to explore the idea further, come out to our next event – details will be announced via the wiki at barcamp.org/VizThink. VizThink1 was held just last week and already people are putting Visual Thinking to good use in their own business.

Find out how you could use it in yours.