Is the Ability to Create Visuals an Important Work Literacy?
Being able to present information and knowledge in a meaningful way seems to me to be a critical work literacy skill. In checking out this graphic on a post about creating and using wheel taxonomies, it occurred to me that for many knowledge workers, developing an ability to present information graphically or visually may be an important, but under-developed and under-utilized skill.
Certainly in some professions (graphic design, architecture, etc.) visual representations are a part of developing the core knowledge and discipline for the occupation. But increasingly this ability to use visual means to create meaning, analyze trends, etc. may be moving into other professions, although we don’t realize it yet.
Harold Jarche had an interesting post the other day on negotiating social meaning in which he asks if knowledge work isn’t a misnomer–or at least a skill that isn’t quite as advanced as we need. He quotes David Weinberger in Everything is Miscellaneous:
In the world after the Enlightenment, the cultural task was to build knowledge. In the miscellaneous world, the task is to build meaning, even though we can’t yet know what we’ll do with this new domain. Certainly some will mine it for knowledge that will change our lives through science and business. But knowledge will only be one product. Knowledge’s new place will be in an ever-present mesh of social meaning. Knowledge is thus not being dethroned. We are way too good at knowing, and our continued progress - and survival - depends on it. But knowledge is now not our only project or our single highest meaning. Making sense of what we know is the broader task, a task for understanding within the infrastructure of meaning.
I think that this is the issue–that knowledge work is something broader, that it’s about making meaning. With that being the case, it seems to me that we’re all going to have to explore and develop a variety of ways for doing that, particularly visual means such as graphics, charts, videos, etc.
Thinking and working more visually is potentially also the way that we make information more accessible and less overwhelming to people. Over at The Bamboo Project, Daniel Bassill left me a comment in which he said:
I think you’re right about information overload and “good enough” but I wonder if you’ve looked at how information visualization and mapping might help people find what they want when they want it?
I have a large library of links on the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site, which are all related in one way or another, to helping kids move from poverty to careers. However, the list is intimidating. Thus, I’ve been working to map it, using free concept mapping tools. You can see an example at http://tinyurl.com/23aa9w.
If you check out Daniel’s example, you can see how he’s trying to use mind mapping as the navigational scheme for his website. For many people, this might make more sense and make the vast array of resources available more meaningful and easier to move through.
What do you think? As knowledge workers, do we need to develop our skills in representing knowledge visually? How do we develop those skills?
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June 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Michele: When I was in training to become an architect, visual problem solving and presentations was my MOJO. That carried over into my management consulting where I presented the problems I uncovered in the form of maps. My visuals were clear to me and helped organize my own thinking. I like the term “mindmaps” for that reason. Visuals work for me and the organizing of what’s floating around in my head.
I noticed I was not as successful at getting much appropriate meaning out of other people’s diagrams. This was especially true of the models of connected cycles that Peter Senge brought into our awareness with The Fifth Discipline. I got to wondering if my diagrams were also not as clear to others as they were to me. My college teaching gave me a wonderful laboratory to experiment with helping others make their own meaning. I learned from the feedback students gave me through their creative output and comments — that visualizations are less effective than stories. We seem to be hard-wired to interpret narrative structures, where conceptual and diagrammatic sense-making are acquired skills. We get the meaning easily when we’re dealing with characters in conflict and getting held in suspense about the next twist of fate. We’re quick to infer motives, aims and reaction patterns from unfolding stories. We’re slower on the uptake with mindmaps that cover the same points and seek the same meaning to be inferred by others. At least that’s my story about creating visuals so far
June 30th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Michele,
A short answer now, but I’ll try to expand on it when time is less scarce.
I think that literacy in visual communications - both producing and reading/interpreting - is an important aspect of overall work literacy.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Yes, developing visual skills help us communicate more effectively.
As someone who has helped people learn about visuals for a long time, the first thing I hear out of most people’s mouths is that they can’t draw. While I love to draw, and can do it, the type of mark-making used for much visual communication used for business does not take drawing skill. If you can make lines and basic shapes, you’ve got what it takes. The much more difficult part is learning how to SEE the visual elements, and apply them to a concept you are trying to convey.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Bringing everyone’s thoughts together here. . . I’m thinking that story-telling, in the broadest sense of presenting information in a format that allows people to make meaning of that information, is a key work literacy skill. It’s one of Dan Pink’s key competencies and I see it all over the place. Sometimes it’s appropriate to use visuals to tell a story–I think about the success of the Common Craft videos that have done such a phenomenal job of telling technology stories using incredibly simple graphics (to your point, Christine, about not needing to be able to draw).
The kind of graphic I used here that got me thinking about all of this may actually not be the best example to use because I think it’s an example of what you’re talking about, Tom, where meanings won’t be immediately clear to everyone who views something like this.
So the challenge seems to lie in how to tie together visual skills with storytelling skills, at least in terms of how I’m seeing it right now.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
In theory about writing, people explore the concept of “writer-based writing” and “reader-based writing”. I suggest that the same kind of distinction can be made for visuals. Creating visual representations can help clarify the thinker’s thoughts, but there are two problems with audience-based visuals. One is our cultural lack of a coherent system of visual literacy and the other is tied to that, our lack of understanding of what an audience will need.
As a culture, we have been growing increasingly visual, especially since the invention of photography and the increasing use of graphic design in magazines, posters, and books. Yet our educational systems still see art and visual literacy as a frill or as specialized knowledge for visual designers. Visual literacy, (not my field so I might be wrong) has no equivalency to studies of rhetoric and discourse communities, except, possibly, among those who create ads.
I agree that narrative works better for communication; I hope visual literacy becomes more studied and widespread.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Michele: I’m thinking you’re in pointed in a fruitful direction to ponder the mashup of storytelling and visuals. The CommmonCraft videos are successful, in my mind, because they are both visual and narrative. Manga books and their comic book predecessors also combine plots and pictures that captivate their readers. I’ve even seen Flash animations where a diagram was assembled slowly and felt like a story about how the whole complex picture comes about in stages.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:28 am
Michele,
The one thing we were able to identify as a common thread across the VizThink community was storytelling, so I think you are right on with that one.
Joan,
Visual literacy is part of most professional art school training. For example, I studied textile design and learned all the visual language elements. Particular applications of the skills come from a wide range of experiences and education. But nowhere near enough. I can’t even imagine going to schools now, my art classes were the most important of all to me.
July 8th, 2008 at 6:44 am
If you are talking about constructing graphics - I HOPE NOT. I can visualize how I want graphics to look, but I am not an artist.
If you are talking about arranging information on a page (or screen) so that it is easily consumed, I think that is an important skill. But I don’t think that sort of design is always graphical.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Michele:
This is an older, not recent passion of mind. About 15 years ago, I discovered the work of Tony Buzan - Thinking on Both Sides of the Brain which introduced the concept of mindmapping. I began a years long study of these techniques - taking notes using it - and mind mapping what I read. I did the latter when I was studying - it just helped me think. In about 1992, I discovered VISIO - a diagram tool and it feed my obsession until someone turned me onto inspiration. My brain works with details before it sees the big picture - don’t remember what’s that called, but when I need to similar - I turn to visuals diagramming and these technology tools. I think these visual mapping tools can really help you think
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2005/07/can_technology_.html
With so much information available these days, I think visual thinking skills are important.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Kia ora Michele!
As a trainee teacher (note the term) one thing I had dinned into me was to develop a sense of clear graphic communication. We used blackboard and chalk in those days.
The rules (if that’s what one could call them) ranged from ensuring there was not too much text and detail on a slide for a child to take in, to the appropriate coloured chalk to use on the blackboard.
Yellow, incidentally, was a colour that was particularly highlighted rather than red as being useful for graphic effect - it is not a coincidence that all the red fire-engines are becoming more and more yellow, all over the globe.
Frankly, even creating chunked but short paragraphs in a blog comment should constitute part of the awareness that good communicators should have/learn.
BUT beware the word ‘literacy’. It is to do with reading and writing. Not to be too confused with graphic design unless there is a textual element there, I’d say.
It is also worth a note that at the beginning of this century unis and polytechs were teaching their web-designers to eschew text. That’s when there was a wave of web sites with text in fonts too small to read or in a colour that blended so well with the backgound they almost disappeared. Not good communication, I’d say. Certainly not good literacy, that’s for sure.
Ka kite
July 30th, 2008 at 12:49 am
This is off topic, but I hope all interested in visual reasoning and literacy will help wikify visual reasoning (http://visualreasoning.wetpaint.com/). A small team at Washington State University are trying to better understand how visual reasoning can be used in the classroom and, more broadly, to define VR as a discipline. The wiki also collects examples of using visual reasoning to solve problems.