Does a blank board give you a mental drawing block?
Beth Kanter’s blog posting on June 1st provides several ideas about thinking visually, How to Get Insight from Data Visualization: SHUT UP and SLOW DOWN! She provides a good reminder to not store data in silos, rather look at relationships in data, look for patterns.
On May 29th, Beth posted, Data Visualization Techniques for Those Who Can’t Draw. Beth states,
I think there is a subtle distinction between “visual thinking” and drawing skills. Visualization of data requires visual thinking to be meaningful and you don’t need to be Picasso to be a good visual thinker and share your ideas in a drawing.
The major problem or block to using visualization is that many people think drawing is just for artists and if you can’t draw well, than you shouldn’t bother to do it. That’s an assumption you need to challenge.
Beth recommends David Sibet’s Visual Meetings book and Dan Roam’s Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work. I have Sibet’s book and find it a useful resource.
