I focus on visual thinking for business people.
Visual thinking. Uh huh. What's that?
Here's my official elevator speech:
Visual thinking means using our innate ability to see -- with our eyes and our mind's eye -- to discover new ideas, develop them and communicate them with other people. The four steps of visual thinking are: look, see, imagine and show. Everybody already knows how to do them all, so visual thinking should be pretty easy.
The good news is that visual thinking is easy. The great news is that with a little practice we can all get even better at it. Especially those people who can most benefit from great ideas, faster development and clearer communications. Like businesspeople.
And here's what I say to people who are stuck with me for more than 30 seconds:
Sometimes -- and usually at random times and places -- my career itself has felt vaguely random: serving as a magazine art director, then setting up Russia's first "western" advertising agency, then running an international marketing communications company, then design directing at an early web boutique, then leading user experience and technology projects for the biggest of the big web shops, now writing a book on visual thinking.
But in hindsight, I see the connection: in all cases, what I was really doing was helping people use pictures to more effectively tell their story, solve their problem, or sell their idea. When I couldn't speak the local language, pictures were worth a thousand words. When I could speak the local language, they could be worth a million. Now I like to use visual thinking as a language itself, a language that conveys more ideas more effectively in more cases than (especially in business) most of the written or spoken word.
Mainly, I'm interested in three aspects of visual thinking:
1. Creating images for people to help them better convey their ideas
2. Teaching people to get better at creating their own images
3. Working with people to create images that help them discover their best ideas
I've grown so fond of all this that I began a business so that I could focus on this all the time... all the time, that is, that I'm not working on my two books about visual thinking.
This blog is by, for and about people who like to think visually -- for business or otherwise. If you're someone who likes to solve problems with pictures, I'd like to think this blog is for us.
I'm introducing your coming book on my blog, come and see.:)
期待一本好书--《餐巾纸的背面》
(Waiting for a good book--the back of the napkin)
http://xiaoxiaosun1978.blog.sohu.com/69914665.html
Posted by: xiaoxiaosun | November 09, 2007 at 12:10 AM
I have become fascinated with how we communicate and fail so often at the attempts to communicate. I have realized that context of the information and styles of understanding information are like the x factor. My greatest aha was when I asked my team in staff every time "What do you think about this...." There was dead silence. Next staff meeting I tried "How do you feel about.." and the room exploded with feedback. I had feelers not thinkers on my staff. My gut tells me that the same blocks may occur for people who prefer visual pictures versus auditory
instructions or a written instruction versus visual one. I see ideas in pictures and concepts and process flows but get dumbfounded by spatial information (blue prints, assembly directions etc). I ask myself.. why do they think I can follow these pictures to put this together. The answer would seem to be that because the manual creator is visual they communicate in the way they understand information and because it makes sense to them it should make sense to the rest of world. I am amazed at how I almost have to have co-workers draw a picture before I get it of a process though before I get it. I honestly feel like my brain drowns out the auditory communication within seconds without a picture to tie it together. The point of all is this is to say I am so glad to have found this site and to discover there are others who think this topic is incredibly interesting.
Posted by: polloman | July 25, 2006 at 06:46 PM
Dan: You and your graphics are very photogenic. Love your blog. I will follow it closely since I need all the help I can get with visual thinking.
Posted by: Shoga | March 07, 2006 at 02:55 PM