All you need to know about Visual Thinking

Guiding principles for VizThink

How to step into these guidelines:

These guidelines are in active development by Dave Gray, Dennis Luijer, Mark Geljon, Ryan Coleman, and Sunni Brown.
We in this document refers to all people who support this effort. The effort (for now) being:

To provide a platform for

1. Cross-pollination between visual thinking disciplines like information design, information architecture, data visualization, geographers, graphic facilitation/graphic recording, comics/graphic novels, architecture, etc.,

2. Cross-pollination between those from any discipline who want to explore visual thinking as a method for increased effectiveness and performance.

The outline and shared definition of this effort shall be created by a community round table, which seats one person from each local VizThink community that shares the same desire: The desire to help build a global community of people who want to create, learn and play in all layers of applied visual thinking.

The purpose of these guidelines is to help bring our shared understanding of our global goal together into one clear and simple manifesto.

VIZTHINK Goal:

VizThink is a global initiative that unites all layers and disciplines of visual thinking, and connects them for better shared use & development. This initiative is active ONLINE as well as OFFLINE.

To achieve these goals we create a dynamic set of guidelines, that will serve the community in its growth and which will be regularly updated by the round table to keep everyone sharp and active! All voices will be heard and are encouraged to amplify their thoughts with pictures!

Guiding principles V 0.1

1. "To align visual thinking disciplines" from the simplest functional tool to the highest abstract level.

There are many communities, conferences and associations that support pieces of the visual thinking community. VizThink is like the United Nations. Instead of focusing on differences, VizThink intends to focus on what unites our various disciplines. Not everyone will be interested in reaching out beyond individual disciplines.

VizThink is for those who are: interdisciplinary, broad thinkers.

To include and not divide!
[picture of open set of people, through whom knowledge and experience is flowing]


2. "To raise the general public's awareness of visual thinking"
To shout from the rooftops (or the mountaintops!) so everyone understands why visual thinking is important, and what visual thinking can do for them and the world.

To provide a platform for members of the community who wish to assist in that effort.

Together we can develop without borders or boundaries. We are capable of showing and exposing our results in the building of our knowledge banks.

To reach out beyond our borders!
[Picture of a globe where all round that globe people are getting on soap boxes and shouting through megaphones ... calling for knowledge/xp's/reflection and discussion... the soapboxes are the local chapters of vizthink]

3. "To support the global community"
The VIZTHINK platform supports regional groups who want to organize local visual thinking communities. To help these emerging communities by providing a common platform that supports their efforts and which connects them to similar communities around the world.

What do we do?

A: To listen to VizThink members and to provide the platform and services that will help them accomplish their goals, for their community and the world.

B: To give visual thinkers a globally-recognized platform where they can reach out to the world and advocate visual thinking as a method for solving problems and achieving goals.

C: To be the wind behind their the back of every regional community!

D: To be a launchpad for any visually oriented project. A starting point from where all members can create a valuable advantage in clear and driven communication.

4. "To sustain itself"

To maintain the necessary staff and infrastructure that will enable VizThink to continue to support the visual thinking community as it grows.

To enable a transparent community platform, supported by its members, which advocates on their behalf and which reflects our common goal.

To embed the use of visuallization in any process. This will anchor all who have joined this effort to a stronghold from which any challenge can be overcome.

Maybe there should only be 4 prime directives... like startrek?

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Some tactical thoughts:

1. Basic services that should always be free (might require registration though):

Events management: Listing an event, taking registrations, items on calendars, etc. free for free/non-profit community events (controlled access beyond simply registered though as is currently done for community leaders) -Ryan 4/17/09 3:16 PM

Subscription services: Local email lists, blog subscriptions, etc.

Conversations: IM, chat, forum discussions on topics of interest, etc.

Community hub area for any regional community (???)

Online profile including contact info, resume, etc., and ability to connect with others


2. Gray area between free and paid (we should discuss):

Job boards, listing jobs, applying for jobs....LINKED IN? Free to view/apply - Fee to post... a fairly standard approach -Ryan 4/17/09 3:15 PM

Podcasts and interactive content

Removing ads? (make the advertiser a part of the effort... the ad has to be a reflection that fits the community)


3. Things worth paying for:

Online live workshops
In person workshops

Conferences... EVENTS with a purpose and a prestated goal!

Books, e-books, magazine subscriptions, research reports and other valuable content that might be generated by the community or its members, especially if it's time-consuming or costly to create

Sponsorship, sponsored studies

Universities?

He Dave,

I refined and added some things on the google document.
Hope you can post them here.

Might be interesing to start up a visual representation of what we are trying to achieve. My drawing will come at the end of the day (its saturday here in amsterdam... ned to relax in the sun!)

I'm totally getting into the concept of VIZTHINK layers. Let us just fill in the blanks between Local, Global, Generalist and Specialist.

Hi Dennis,

I have revised the document based on your inputs.

Dave

First of all, I think it's a great idea that you're laying out your guidelines. I've wondered since VizThink '08 how VizThink would be able to appeal to such a broad range of disciplines and specialties.

The United Nations metaphor is an interesting one. I think focusing on the commonalities is great, but, I also think that for VizThink to survive and flourish it needs to somehow foster communities of disciplines. For example, I seriously doubt that the hardcore infoviz community will give any respect to VizThink unless VizThink can foster a sub-community of serious infoviz with professional practitioners from that community.

So, I think that establishing communities of practice within VizThink along discipline lines is essential to draw in practitioners. That may sound like a violation of the "to include and not divide" principle, but I really think that people primarily see and define themselves first by the discipline they practice (i.e. "I'm an information architect," "I'm a graphic recorder," "I'm a cartoonist," etc.) I think you need to accept that there are divisions, reach out with that in mind, bring people in with that in mind and then work on building the bridges, breaking down the borders and finding the commonalities.

I think that's a great point Jeff. In case you haven't noticed, we have opened up the forums so that they are now free to anyone. If there's anyone out there who wants to start building more focused conversations around specific topic areas I hope you will do so.

The question is, what would the "infoviz community" gain from having a deeper, more focused conversation here in a borader community?

I think I might answer that by saying: You will expose your ideas to a wider audience, perhaps recruit people to your way of thinking, but also, and equally valuable, expose your ideas to critical thinking from *outside* your discipline -- which could result in connections and breakthroughs that might not happen otherwise.

Dave

Dave Gray wrote:

QUOTE:

The question is, what would the "infoviz community" gain from having a deeper, more focused conversation here in a borader community?

Dave

Cross-pollination and learning how to make their craft more engaging. I personally like infoviz, but I'm an analytical type. I think for people who are not naturally analytical, a lot of hard core infoviz is boring. I think the infoviz community could gain a broader audience and following if they can appreciate that not everyone is naturally predisposed to data portrayed just simply and elegegantly - that some people need to be drawn in by visually appealing graphics and learn to make their visualizations more engaging. On the other end of the spectrum (to avoid appearing to pick on the infoviz community) the graphic recording/facilitating community could gain more respect from the hardcore data/analytical types by learning and incorporating elements from the infoviz discipline.