Visual thinking is an approach to understanding, creating, and communicating information visually. It involves using techniques from information visualization, mind mapping, sequential visual representations, and principles from film and comics. Visual thinking can enhance performance in thinking, representing, and communicating. It is useful for tasks like problem solving, maintaining productivity, and producing more compelling products. The Vizability textbook and exercises teach visual thinking skills that can be applied in work and life.

1. Visual Thinking Rich Miller LexisNexis Research Scientist Alliances & New Technology [email_address]

2. What is Visual Thinking? An approach to understanding, creating, and communicating A collection of visually-based concepts and methods Information Visualization guidelines Mindmaps Sequential visual representations What we can learn from Film and Comics Vizability – cd/book on visual skills

3. Visual Thinking and “Aboutness” General connection Understanding what things are about Communicating what things are about Specific connection Visualizations of index term collections Result of visual thinking Prime you to more visually process today’s information

4. Synonyms visual thinking Vizability non-linear thinking lateral thinking spatial reasoning right brain thinking

6. Who is it for? Everyone who needs to imagine, resolve, invent, analyze, and communicate UI designers, product managers, mathematicians, geneticists, writers, engineering students, etc. Anyone who needs to formulate a problem and/or represent its solution to colleagues or users

7. Why is it useful? To enhance performance in… Thinking Representing Communicating To create more compelling, usable products Incorporating visualization into daily work can translate to superior products

8. A Basic, Real World Example

10. InfoViz Guidelines Tufte Espouses “graphical excellence” using his principles Hates “chart junk” Anti-PowerPoint Three landmark books Offers excellent seminar Presentation guidelines Kosslyn Psychology-based principles Focus on limitations of human perceptual system Others Many companies creating product solutions Ray Daley monitoring infoviz for LEXIS-NEXIS

14. Visualization Examples Inxight hyperbolic tree Criminal Intelligence – link analysis Thinkmap – spider , bubble, chronology Demo of answer set visualization

15. Sequential Art Concepts Film Borrow filmmaking techniques for UI design and visual representation. Use pictures, time, and space to communicate Example course Comics Similar techniques to film, but more discontinuous Scott McCloud books Understanding Comics – “must read” for web designers; recommended by Tufte Reinventing Comics

17. Mind Maps Spatial/hierarchical representation of a given information space A.k.a concept maps Examples Univ. of Zurich professor Steve Gould from UK Books Mindmapping The Mind Map Book

20. Vizability Textbook + CD + sketchpad Outgrowth of McKim book/course Used at Stanford to teach ME students how to draw Drawing can be taught…not as innate as one might think To enhance performance in… Thinking and Perceiving Representing Communicating

21. Vizability Goals Familiarize you w/the visual culture Make you aware of your own visual abilities Exercise and improve your skills in visualization Incorporate these skills into your daily life and professional activities

22. Vizability Benefits Provides a methodology and awareness… About problem finding and problem solving About maintaining momentum on a task About knowing how to sustain “flow experiences” -- productivity state between boredom and anxiety. Get more out of your mind By building fluid representational skills More useful outputs Idea logs Whiteboard content Pictures used for communication and reference

23. The ARC Cycle

24. The cube metaphor Six sides - 6 elements of visual culture Environments Culture Seeing Drawing Diagramming Imagining Like a cube, the product is non-linear

25. Samples from the Vizability CD Cast Culture Prototyping Sketching Idea logs Environment Seeing Imagining Drawing Diagramming

26. Putting in into practice Look more closely, and analyze what you see When in doubt, draw a picture Or ask someone to draw theirs Borrow concepts from other forms of communication (e.g. film, comics) Maximize rate of info transfer, minimize noise (e.g. PPT 3D feature) Start your idea log Feel free to contact me at… [email_address]

27. Memex Link Analysis return