I’m going to launch a physical card deck on Kickstarter and I am going to offer an online course along with the cards. In the course I will be showing you how I use the cards, but also how I take visual notes on index cards, why I do it that way, and how you can make this practice a part of your life as well. You can help me develop the course by answering a couple of questions:
What are the most important questions you would want answered in a course like this?
What other burning questions do you have about visual frameworks?
First of all, this sounds super good and I as a service design student and urban planner would like to take the course, as I’ve been following your work and it’s inspiring.
Something I would like to be answered or explore is :
1)with who to use the cards,
2)for what type of contexts (problems situations, projects, ideation , etc.) , like examples of projects and it’s scales (size)
3)what can the people -with whom we might use the cards to generate a discussion- can learn from the visual thinking. And I mention this because sometimes as facilitators, designers or moderators we need to use low treshold tools and vocabulary.
4)And one last thing, what next steps can follow after visualizing information
My question: how can I use this card deck with my middle school students to help them learn more visual thinking skills? I already have them make drawings and other graphics in their field journal for science field trips and note-taking, so being asked to represent something visually will not be a total shock, but I think this card deck could give them more ideas.
Similar to Mark, how do you encourage teams of 'senior professionals', that are time poor, impatient, unaccustomed to thinking visually, and don't initially see the ROI of succinct and simple visuals to grasp concepts and models to engage with the material.
Further, often I see teams will 'play' with visuals once, but don't see it as a routine communication and learning device.
Lastly, what's next - often workshops and meetings have greater nuance and dynamics that the visuals or the instructions may not support. For example, teams can get stuck with an effort v impact matrix when thinking relatively (ie. across the ideas developed) or in comparison to 'the world at large'
Hello Dave! Thanks for all your hard and creative work on this. I'm Carlo, founder of Visual Partner-Ship, and I've been working as a software engineer and also as a visual practitioner for a while. I've been focusing on create graphic recordings in tech conferences, and teach about Visual Thinking, that's why your work result really interesting to me.
When people see a graphic recording, they use to ask me about how they can structure their thoughts in that way, and I use to answer you need practice your visual thinking to be able to structure your own visual alphabet to translate any kind of knowledge into your own language. So the words "visual framework" has a lot of meaning for me, thinking about a graphic recording, you need to structure the content, for that you need guidelines that should be really flexible to adapt and enough organized to give you a good support, how can you balance the structure vs the flexibility is the thing that all visual practitioners are doing in our works, so then share this with others that doesn't have an design background it's a really hard and interesting work.
Based on my experience, if I would have the chance to talk to you, I'd ask you:
- How can you be able to capture universal ideas to translate into icons to build the framework?
- How can you achieve the flexibility to anyone to build their way of thinking in your framework?
- I think your idea is really close to theory systems, I think your visual framework + the users interaction are a system in synergy: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. How the users could have feedback from the framework?
- Organize and structure is part of our history as humans, how can you achieve the organic way of thinking instead of standardize a methodology, or is this a methodology?
- The book "Drawing a Hypothesis" mention drawings have two goals: structure known content and discover unknown knowledge, if the visual framework is doing this, could be a really great tool.
In my current work, I'm researching about how developers could boots their careers with technical skills and soft skills, my big concern is how can I model something organic vs create just a guideline to follow, in my mind I always refer to navigation charts as something to reference to find your way, but it's hard to achieve.
Again, thanks for your hard work. I hope see more of this in the future.
First of all thanks for working on Visual Frameworks. I strongly believe it is the one thing that's missing from my facilitation toolkit.
Like any tool, there might be some potential pitfalls/exceptions that may not be immediately obvious to a new user of that tool or framework. It would be good to include a footer note about it on each visual framework card. Or something along the line of "This works best when ....blah³.."
I work with teams who are unstructured in their thinking, impatient & multiple stakeholders who believe their answer is the only one that is valid. However, the output in terms of creativity & impact is sub-optimal.
This is where I believe the card deck has value. In that is can very quickly deploy a framework to structure their thinking. With the aim of better exploration & outcomes.
My question is, under those challenging circumstances, what is the best tactic to deploy the framework (fast) so that stakeholders engage (hopefully!) with the framework.
Materials available could include:
Wipe board, flip chart, Miro
I think the key point behind my question is that structured thinking can have a profound positive effect. However, stakeholders need to have some patience & trust to experience this benefit. But in my experience getting stakeholders to try some thing different is very challenging.
Cards look great Dave, congratulations. From a course perspective it might be useful to discuss how the cards can be used to support the “divergent, emergent, and convergent” phases of facilitated sessions. I’ve used your “head, hand, and heart” approach to visualisation previously and some participants found it a little intimidating / theoretical; so some ideas of how to accommodate the various needs of “less visual” participants would be helpful. Thanks. /Julian
I’m anxious to see what you com up with. I don’t consider myself to have “creative “ ideas of my own. If you can help me in this area; I’d be sure to consider this project. I too am an avid Kickstarter customer.
I too am thrilled that you are finally getting your project off the ground.
Congratulations. I can't wait to have them.
I am working on personal emotional issues and inspired by you I am developing cards little by little, as issues and problems arise. My question would be, could you give real examples of situations where you would use one or the other card, or that we can share them with you when we use them.
I'm a change analyst who would love to use visual communication more to capture the outcomes of workshops and research, as well as to communicate key business ideas in visual form. I loved your post on LinkedIn re the framework your young daughter used to build her visual diagram for class. I want to learn to improve my use of visual frameworks to communicate ideas simply and effectively. If your cards can help me remember what I (will) learn in your course, and apply learnings to my projects, this would be super-calla-fraji-listic!
- possibility to mix with others, I imagine some are complementary.
As a facilitator, I design experience and integrate many methodologies, so this will be key to create the metamodels I use for my workshop, classes and experiences.
First of all, this sounds super good and I as a service design student and urban planner would like to take the course, as I’ve been following your work and it’s inspiring.
Something I would like to be answered or explore is :
1)with who to use the cards,
2)for what type of contexts (problems situations, projects, ideation , etc.) , like examples of projects and it’s scales (size)
3)what can the people -with whom we might use the cards to generate a discussion- can learn from the visual thinking. And I mention this because sometimes as facilitators, designers or moderators we need to use low treshold tools and vocabulary.
4)And one last thing, what next steps can follow after visualizing information
Thank you! Great thoughts.
My question: how can I use this card deck with my middle school students to help them learn more visual thinking skills? I already have them make drawings and other graphics in their field journal for science field trips and note-taking, so being asked to represent something visually will not be a total shock, but I think this card deck could give them more ideas.
Great thought, adding it to my course notes
When to apply these cards and when NOT to apply these cards?
Excellent suggestion
Similar to Mark, how do you encourage teams of 'senior professionals', that are time poor, impatient, unaccustomed to thinking visually, and don't initially see the ROI of succinct and simple visuals to grasp concepts and models to engage with the material.
Further, often I see teams will 'play' with visuals once, but don't see it as a routine communication and learning device.
Lastly, what's next - often workshops and meetings have greater nuance and dynamics that the visuals or the instructions may not support. For example, teams can get stuck with an effort v impact matrix when thinking relatively (ie. across the ideas developed) or in comparison to 'the world at large'
Great thoughts, will think about this
Hello Dave! Thanks for all your hard and creative work on this. I'm Carlo, founder of Visual Partner-Ship, and I've been working as a software engineer and also as a visual practitioner for a while. I've been focusing on create graphic recordings in tech conferences, and teach about Visual Thinking, that's why your work result really interesting to me.
When people see a graphic recording, they use to ask me about how they can structure their thoughts in that way, and I use to answer you need practice your visual thinking to be able to structure your own visual alphabet to translate any kind of knowledge into your own language. So the words "visual framework" has a lot of meaning for me, thinking about a graphic recording, you need to structure the content, for that you need guidelines that should be really flexible to adapt and enough organized to give you a good support, how can you balance the structure vs the flexibility is the thing that all visual practitioners are doing in our works, so then share this with others that doesn't have an design background it's a really hard and interesting work.
Based on my experience, if I would have the chance to talk to you, I'd ask you:
- How can you be able to capture universal ideas to translate into icons to build the framework?
- How can you achieve the flexibility to anyone to build their way of thinking in your framework?
- I think your idea is really close to theory systems, I think your visual framework + the users interaction are a system in synergy: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. How the users could have feedback from the framework?
- Organize and structure is part of our history as humans, how can you achieve the organic way of thinking instead of standardize a methodology, or is this a methodology?
- The book "Drawing a Hypothesis" mention drawings have two goals: structure known content and discover unknown knowledge, if the visual framework is doing this, could be a really great tool.
In my current work, I'm researching about how developers could boots their careers with technical skills and soft skills, my big concern is how can I model something organic vs create just a guideline to follow, in my mind I always refer to navigation charts as something to reference to find your way, but it's hard to achieve.
Again, thanks for your hard work. I hope see more of this in the future.
Carlo, from Mexico City.
@carlogilmar | @visual_partner
These are great thoughts Carlo and well structured. I definitely have thoughts on this and will make sure to add them into the course
First of all thanks for working on Visual Frameworks. I strongly believe it is the one thing that's missing from my facilitation toolkit.
Like any tool, there might be some potential pitfalls/exceptions that may not be immediately obvious to a new user of that tool or framework. It would be good to include a footer note about it on each visual framework card. Or something along the line of "This works best when ....blah³.."
Thanks again Dave for doing this 🙏🏼😌.
I’ve been trying to do this on the website… for example, “alignment” … often a good thing but can also be a problem https://visualframeworks.com/alignment/
Hello Dave,
Question for either the course or the card deck.
I work with teams who are unstructured in their thinking, impatient & multiple stakeholders who believe their answer is the only one that is valid. However, the output in terms of creativity & impact is sub-optimal.
This is where I believe the card deck has value. In that is can very quickly deploy a framework to structure their thinking. With the aim of better exploration & outcomes.
My question is, under those challenging circumstances, what is the best tactic to deploy the framework (fast) so that stakeholders engage (hopefully!) with the framework.
Materials available could include:
Wipe board, flip chart, Miro
I think the key point behind my question is that structured thinking can have a profound positive effect. However, stakeholders need to have some patience & trust to experience this benefit. But in my experience getting stakeholders to try some thing different is very challenging.
Kind regards,
Mark Woodyatt
Great question, one I hear a lot. I will definitely make sure this is answered in the course.
I would like to experience you using the techniques to teach, as you can. I like what Marieliz requested too.
Yes I imagine we will be doing a lot of role play and hands-on experience in the course
Cards look great Dave, congratulations. From a course perspective it might be useful to discuss how the cards can be used to support the “divergent, emergent, and convergent” phases of facilitated sessions. I’ve used your “head, hand, and heart” approach to visualisation previously and some participants found it a little intimidating / theoretical; so some ideas of how to accommodate the various needs of “less visual” participants would be helpful. Thanks. /Julian
The cards definitely play better in the divergent and emergent phases. Will give this some thought. Thank you
Great deck!
- Develop some ideas about which card to choose based on what circumstances.
- How to use a random card to get to the card that most likely is the best fit
- How to use multiple cards to get different perspective on same topic/problem
- How to use the visual framework as a team of 2/3 facilitators running a session with many people.
Excellent things which I will make sure to include
I’m anxious to see what you com up with. I don’t consider myself to have “creative “ ideas of my own. If you can help me in this area; I’d be sure to consider this project. I too am an avid Kickstarter customer.
I think these cards will help with that and I look forward to showing you how.
I too am thrilled that you are finally getting your project off the ground.
Congratulations. I can't wait to have them.
I am working on personal emotional issues and inspired by you I am developing cards little by little, as issues and problems arise. My question would be, could you give real examples of situations where you would use one or the other card, or that we can share them with you when we use them.
Will do!
I'm a change analyst who would love to use visual communication more to capture the outcomes of workshops and research, as well as to communicate key business ideas in visual form. I loved your post on LinkedIn re the framework your young daughter used to build her visual diagram for class. I want to learn to improve my use of visual frameworks to communicate ideas simply and effectively. If your cards can help me remember what I (will) learn in your course, and apply learnings to my projects, this would be super-calla-fraji-listic!
Can you share that publication again, if you can find it, I missed it.
Which publication?
Hi Dave, the one Debi mentioned, that you shared of your daughter.
- what are common applications of each framework?
- possibility to mix with others, I imagine some are complementary.
As a facilitator, I design experience and integrate many methodologies, so this will be key to create the metamodels I use for my workshop, classes and experiences.
If you need people to try this, count me in.
Regards from Chile,
Antonio