I attended the Building Business Capability conference (the official conference of the International Institute of Business Analysis) and had the immense pleasure of meeting the founders of “The Virtual Jam” – a U.K. company that teaches professionals how to think visually to tell stories and share information.
Their session started out with Grant Wright and Paddy (Pardeep) Dhanda debunking ICD (the I can’t draw syndrome). Based on a chart they shared, our artistic creativity peaks when we are young children and continues nose-diving thereafter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t recapture that ability.
The Five Visual Thinking Types
Then we learned about the five different types of visual thinking, summarized by this lovely graphic:
The Visual Thinking Exercise
Next, came the fun part. The jam-packed session included a live drawing exercise that everyone got to participate in. I was lucky enough to distribute the pens and paper so everyone could take a crack at visual thinking. Oh, and we also got to do a bit of Bollywood dancing (led by Paddy) at the beginning to get the creative juices flowing (which I was horrible at, but it was a ton of fun).
Grant was the primary “doodler,” sharing his screen with us as he drew. As he did so, he also walked us through the steps to draw out several characters ourselves. These figures represented countries around the world, for a travel company. The concepts were straightforward, and I think almost everyone in the room succeeded in creating something that resembled Grant’s final work. Here’s mine:
Having color might help to distinguish between the different countries represented, but I think you can tell that COVID got us all upset, so we want to travel to these places virtually. We’ve got Italy and Brazil represented, along with somewhere famous for tulips (sorry, I can’t remember if it was Denmark or some other Nordic country).
Stay Nimble
Somewhere along the way I learned that it’s also important to be able to pivot, and to not get stuck on ideas. Along these lines, I also discovered a little known fact (at least to me) which is that YouTube actually started out as a dating site (seriously)!
Learn More
Grant and Paddy also recommended the book “Presto Sketching” by Ben Crothers for anyone who is interested in learning more about these visual techniques. You can pick this book up on Amazon.
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Final Thoughts
For anyone who thinks they’re not artistic – don’t let that stop you from trying out some of these visual techniques. Everyone likes pictures more than words, so if you want to communicate in a way that sticks out – give Visual Thinking a try! If you have already tried this approach, I’d love to hear about your experiences, so please share in the comments below!