Visual Thinkers Unite!

Written by

Nancy Duarte

I had the privilege of spending two full days with a handful of widely revered visual thinkers. Dave Gray,  Dave Sibbet, Elizabeth Pastor, Tom Crawford, Michelle Malott and Tom Wujec.

When we met up at the VizThink conference in February this year Tom Wujec pulled us together to see if we wanted to help him communicate the value of visual thinking to a broader community. Last week we spent time brainstorming the value of visual thinking, writing a manifesto and developing a universal model that expresses what visual thinking is regardless of how our own businesses use visual thinking.

Here’s my sketch of the model

The cool part about this model  is that it was intentionally developed to be flexible. If you’re trying to explain what a visual thinker does in the simplest way possible, this model works. Each professional puts his or her own intent in the center. My intent with my business is to Activate Audiences. Visual thinkers recognize (or redeem) the past by illustrating historical wins (or losses) that need to be remembered; they serve as context for the exploration you’re doing as you envision the future direction to take your firm.

Here are some cool visual thinking workshops coming up

There’s a VERY cool visual thinking seminar on how to do visual note-taking. This is a great skill to use for clarifying your ideas. It’s being sponsored by VizThink and it being presented by some of my favorite other favorite visual thinkers.

Elizabeth Pastor is hosting Visual SenseMaking Workshop on May 16th in NYC.