One of the great perks of working for a company that hosts a UX conference is that I get to talk to some of the very top people in the business. One of those people is Dave Gray of XPLANE. Dave was kind enough to answer a few questions on visual thinking. It will be great to hear more on the subject at CanUX.

Dennis: You talk about the need for visual literacy - the ability to both interpret and create visual forms of communication. There's a tendency to think that people either have it or they don't when it comes to visual ability; that it's an inborn talent. Can anyone be taught visual thinking skills?

Dave: We all have visual thinking skills. If you can learn how to read and write, and you're not blind, then you can definitely learn how to represent anything visually. Learning to read and write isn't easy, although most of us have forgotten the struggle we had when we learned to do it. But if you can write the letters of the alphabet you already have the hand-eye coordination and thinking skills you need to be able to draw anything you want. It's simply a matter of taking the time and learning how to do it. Much of my focus these days is in trying to develop a simple, repeatable method for teaching anyone to draw their ideas.

Dennis: We live in a time where the most people encounter an enormous amount of visual input. In this kind of environment can visual communication still make a difference?

Dave: The reason we encounter so much input is that it does make a difference. Look at the difference between the previous text interfaces to computers and the web, compared with the current GUI interfaces. The major difference visual thinking makes is that it makes information and interaction suddenly available to the entire planet instead of the experts. The experts don't always like it but if you want to be understood broadly it's the best way to get your information out there and get people starting to interact with it.

Dennis: Among other things, XPLANE makes poster-like visualizations of incredibly complex systems. Do you ever encounter resistance from subject matter experts who think that their complexity just can't be boiled down to a picture?

Dave: Not very often, but it does happen occasionally. Once we were working with a product launch for a major Fortune 500 company. The experts argued that the picture oversimplified the system, which couldn't possibly be conveyed in such a "cartoon." While they were arguing and deliberating over the sketches we provided, the product was failing in the marketplace because salespeople couldn't explain it. The product failed and the experts lost their jobs. It was very sad, like watching people argue on the deck of the Titanic without noticing the ship was sinking.

Dave will be doing a session on visual thinking in practice on the final day of the conference. I'm ready to draw!

Posted in on October 30, 2008

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