"Visual thinking school" reveals how to solve business issues, communicate better - with pictures

Dave Gray, the CEO of XPLANE, has launched a multi-part "Visual Thinking School" on Squidoo. It consists of a series of "lenses" (resource pages) that together form a "mini-course" on various facets of visual thinking, including:

• An introduction to visual thinking
• Visual communication skills - how to make your messages more clear, concise and consistent
• Visual vocabulary - Learn about a set of elements, or visual "words" that make communicating visually possible
• Visual thinking tools - This lens is still under construction, but Dave's tools of choice are pencil/pen and paper.
• Visual thinking spaces - Some work spaces are more conducive to visual thinking than others. Dave shares some tips for setting up your workspace to support it.
• Sketching - All about learning to "see" visually - it's not as hard as you think!
• Signs, symbols and icons - These elements are ways to represent a complete thought in a simple way. Dave explains how to utilize them.
• Information design - This is the discipline of developing structures which allow people to find information that's relevant to them (e.g., website design and structure is a great example)
• Visual mapping - A way to think through complex problems or solve problems - visually. This mini-course does focus on mind maps, concept maps, flow charts and other techniques.

Dave is a pretty brilliant guy. Even though most of these presentations don't deal directly with mind mapping or mind mapping software, many of the underlying principles and concepts are here, and are explained briefly and clearly. I highly recommend that you check out these visual thinking resources!

Comments

[Dave Gray]

Thanks Chuck for the very nice words!