Visual Thinking and Cooking?
August 28, 2008 – 8:36 amWhat does visual thinking have to do with cooking? It’s not just an image of the finished dish (though that certainly helps and isn’t used often enough). Some of my favorite cookbooks not only include images of the finished dish, but illustrate techniques and instructions along the way. The one that immediately comes to mind is Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for the Food
VizThink community member and owner of Frog Commissary, Steve Poses is taking visual thinking and cookbooks to the next level. He has just launched the in development version of the companion website for his new book, Frog Home Entertaining (name in development). While he’s been in the business for 35 years, nine restaurants, 15,000 catered events and 15 million customers, he’s looking for help from you, the visual thinking audience:
1. You can Preview content – recipes, notes, design alternatives, drawings, worksheets
2. You can Test recipes
3. You can Comment – praise or criticize, share ideas. What do you think should be included in the book and on the companion website?
There is a whole new world of collaborative book design and publishing out there, and this is a great example. To get involved, just go to his site and jump right in. I can’t wait to see the results of these collaborations when the book and website launches in the spring. My kitchen is already warming up testing recipes!
Manuel Lima is an interaction designer, information architect, design researcher. In 2002 he completed a 5-year BFA in Industrial Design at the Faculty of Architecture - UTL Lisbon and finished a 7-month internship at the design firm Kontrapunkt, in Copenhagen, Denmark. In May 2005 Manuel Lima completed his MFA degree from the Design+Technology program at Parsons School of Design, New York. For this purpose he received scholarships from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Luso-American Foundation and a Dean’s scholarship from Parsons School of Design.
One of the benefits of working at VizThink is that we get to read advanced copies of books by the many smart people in our industry. Some are better than others, but none compare to the next book on our list. Nancy Duarte has just released her new book, slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations which packages 20 years of experience at Duarte Design into a handy tool that promises to “revoloutionize presentation communications”, and it delivers on that promise. Presentation guru, and amazing author in his own right, Garr Reynolds in his blog calls the book his “
to see this video in greater detail.
We are also offering a workshop with Nancy and three other great visual thinking gurus (Dave Gray, David Sibbet, and Karl Gude) on September 16th. Nancy will share some of her insights from the book and take live questions from the audience. This special workshop will only be available online and will only be available to registrants. Here are the workshop details:
When does multitouch work best? How can touch screen technologies improve the visual thinking process? What new things can we do now that we have this technology? How do we integrate the previous work in the field of visual thinking with the new technologies? These are just a few of the questions being worked on by 
(Currently #122 in books on Amazon); 
Do you have business idea? Have you wondered how to start a business? Would you like to take your current independent or small business to the next level? On Sunday 12 October, 
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I’ve been a big fan of Legos since I was at least 5 years old. I still have my original Lego sets…back when there were 4 basic bricks in a very standard color set and only a few augmented pieces like roof tiles, arches and hard rubber wheels. Even the, now iconic, Lego people were just beginning to become popular. Since then, the options for Lego have expanded dramatically extensive sets, custom sets, robotics, video games, software, and even into business. Legos aren’t just for kids anymore. We’re very excited to announce that 
Per joined 
People have said that human’s are good, even great, pattern matchers. So much so, that we often find patterns where they don’t exist (such as messages in the static on TV, Elvis on a potato chip). Yet sometimes, people discover or at least make clear patterns that were always present, but not always evident. In fact, I suppose it could be said that one of the goals of visual thinking is to discover or make clear patterns that were present, but not evident. Well today’s podcast definitely achieves that goal with Christian Behrens, Research Assistant at the Interaction Design Lab in Potsdam, Germany. In this podcast, we discuss a variety of topics such as:
What role does realism play in visualization and simulations? When is realism important and when is it not? How does the selection of media impact learning and communication outcomes? How and when do you use mixed media? What determines those choices? Discussions on these and many other topics are just some of the things that 
Ole is the founder of 
Mark started his career with Ford Motor Co. where he was taught how to be a good analyst and a bit about management. He then left to co-found the TUP Group, a successful MIS company where he learnt how to be a better analyst and a few things about leadership. In all this time the thing he learnt most was that visual thinking was the critical element in everything he did. So in 2003 he founded Crystal Mapping Ltd., and originated crystal mapping as a new way of visually presenting and communicating information. Crystal Mapping - The Bigger Picture, was published in 2007 and now as CEO of Crystal Mapping and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Mark is committed to new ways of combining words, pictures and numbers to present information, improve understanding and change the way companies think and communicate.
Yuri is an Assistant Professor in Mediastudies and Information Visualization at the University of Amsterdam, and lecturer in Information Graphics at the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, in the Netherlands. He is interested in principles underlying the visual communication of information, from ancient pictorial inscriptions to interactive data visualizations. He also combines his expertise concerning diagrams, graphics, information visualization and visual language theory with his desire to do something useful concerning social and environmental issues. Among many other things, Yuri has written The Language of Graphics. For more details about Yuri, be sure to check out 
Martin is a chaired professor of information and communication management at the University of Lugano (USI) in Switzerland, where he is conducting research on knowledge management, knowledge visualization, and knowledge communication. He has been an advisor to organizations such as the United Nations, UBS, Philips, the Swiss Military, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Swiss Re, Daimler and others.