Blog Posts About: visualthinking

Sachi and will be heading down to South-by-Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) March 13th-17th and I hope we'll see you there. We'll have plenty of stickers - just ask! 

I'll also be speaking, along with an excellent group of folks from the visual thinking world, at a panel discussion called "Shift Happens - Moving From Word to Pictures." The panel is on Monday (3/16) at 5pm 10am.

Other panelists include:

• Sunni Brown Owner, BrightSpot Info Design
• Tom Crawford CEO, VizThink
• Dave Gray Chairman, XPLANE
• Dan Roam   Pres, Digital Roam Inc

It's going to be an awesome discussion. I hope we'll see you there!

It seems like a long way off, but South-by-Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) is just around the corner (March 2009).  At the moment, the public is voting on what speaking panels should be accepted for the event.  When the voting finishes (August 29, 2008) the SXSW staff will consider the results of the voting when deciding what panels will be picked.

I say all this because I hope you'll vote for our panel. :) Here are the details:

Shift Happens: Moving from Words to Pictures

Description: People are hardwired for visualization yet we rely significantly on text. Most games, graphic novels, magazines, interfaces, IKEA instructions, and many other forms of communication take advantage of people’s natural visual thinking ability. Panelists will discuss how to leverage visual techniques to improve your games, websites, movies, communications, or presentations.

My fellow panelists include Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin, Dave Grey, Founder and Chairman of Xplane and two Austin, Texas natives Sunni Brown and Marilyn Martin.  I'm so honored to be a part of this group. Thanks to Tom Crawford as VizThink for getting the ball rolling.

We'd love to have your vote, pretty please?

Japan is surely one of the politest places you're likely to visit.  If you ask someone for directions, there is a good chance they will walk you there themselves. Behaving honorably is an important part of the culture and there is never a lack of signs, often cleverly illustrated, reminding the public of what is expected.

One of the most interesting and clever examples I found is produced by Japan Tobacco. In smoking areas, on trains and near ashtrays, there are often signs related to smoking and behavior in crowds. Notice the minimalist illustrations and the strange-but-effective messaging from these examples.

This is my favorite. The proper disposal of cigarette butts is an important issue. Meet. Love. The End. - A timeless story.

 and...

Some are designed (I think) to promote awareness of how non-smokers perceive smokers. 

 and...

 also...Neglect.

But, it's not just focused on smokers.  On trains you may see signs about proper train behavior.  For instance, apparently public grooming is discouraged.  Make up - Image down.

 And those backpacks.  I have been in violation multiple times.  

Unexpectedness, emotion, concrete examples, these signs are right from Made To Stick. 

You can find a gallery of over 70 of these signs via Conbinibento and some particulary funny ones at InOnePunch. I've been collecting strange signs from all over here and don't forget Darren's Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness.

Bonus sign - a mission statement in Engrish, from a bakery at a train station in small town Shikoku, Japan:

Good quality cumbustion setting up is very important for me, personally. 

Text and bullet points - they are dead, or at least used inappropriately.  That was one of the overwhelming messages from VizThink, a two day conference on Visual Thinking.  We agree.

This was the first (of hopefully many) conferences on visual thinking put on by VizThink, the brainchild of Dave Gray of Xplane.  It brought together people from around the world who focus in communicating with pictures. More info on the wiki.

For example, on the first morning we sat down with three pediatric ER doctors from Loma Linda University. They often talk to parents in the ER about pediatric medical problems and a brochure doesn't work.  They see visual thinking as a way to communicate complex problems in the emergency room situation.  Indeed, there are near-infinite applications for visual thinking.

I wish I could mention everyone we met, but here are a few.

We had dinner with Ole Qvist- Sorensen of Bigger Picture who was there from Copenhagen, Denmark - I have a feeling we'll be hanging out with Ole before long - a great guy with lots of ideas.

Ryan Coleman of Clay Tablet Technologies turned out to be a friend of our good friend Will Pate. Ryan has started local Visual Thinking BarCamps around Toronto.

Cliff Atkinson of BBP (Beyond Bullet Points) came to our session and stuck around afterward for a chat.  We really connected with Cliff - he loves being small and independent and we share a lot of the same ideas.

Speaking of our session, we had a great time and I hope the attendees did too.  It was called "Solving Explanation Problems with Simple Online Videos"  The session was mostly group activity where we asked teams to produce storyboards.

It warmed our hearts to hear the whole group yelling "yaay!" and
"boooo!" (appropriately) when the teams presented their storyboards. As Sachi said - it was like they were singing a song we wrote. :)

One thing I found interesting was that we didn't meet anyone else doing video. It was like the visual thinking world and the video world had not previously intersected.  I hope that we inspired some of the attendees to take another look at video.

We owe a big thanks to Tom, Chris, Denise and the VizThink folks for inviting us to participate and pulling off a great conference. We'll be back!

We're headed to a conference called VizThink in a few days.  It's a conference on Visual Thinking.  It wasn't clear to us when we got started, but our videos are examples of visual thinking and I've been keeping an eye out for related resources.

One resource that I'm excited about is a forthcoming book by Dan Roam called The Back of the Napkin, which is all about solving problems and selling ideas with pictures.  It comes out on March 13th and I'm looking forward to meeting Dan at VizThink. 

Dan's blog has been another source of information and recently he wrote about Meryl K. Evans' list of 175 visual thinking resources.  That post has a lot of really interesting information.

Maybe you're coming to VizThink?  If so, leave a comment and we'll try to hook up.  Oh, and by the way, we're doing a session on Tuesday called "Solving Explanation Problems with Simple Online Videos." I hope you'll come!