Sketching at Work

I attended a workshop by Martin Eppler at the 2008 VizThink conference in Berlin and was struck by the quality of his work in using Graphic Organisers in business. So I was keen to get my hands on this booklet.

Don’t be put off by the word sketching in the title. It’s not about drawing. Instead, it’s very clear and concise compendium of a range of visual tools useful for business thinking and dialogue. 

Throughout, there is an emphasis on using these tools as aids to discussion. Pitfalls to avoid are a focus on producing a work of beauty at the expense of clarity and speed of execution. The whole point is for the sketching to keep up with the talking. And to be constantly revised in line with the iterative development of ideas. 

Reference: Martin J. Eppler & Roland Pfister (2010), Sketching at Work (University of Gallen, Switzerland); to obtain a copy go to www.sketchingatwork.com

Pensions Flow Chart

Ah, The Guardian again to the rescue.

A couple of years back, we were all pretty confused about world banking and the decreasing value of pensions. Well, I was.

But a simple flow chart and the mist clears.

What strikes me about the creation of flow charts is whether teachers could devise equally enlightening Graphic Organisers about their specialist subject. Just imagine the extra power their explanations would have if supported by such tools.

TV channels chart

I’m not quite sure what you would call this infographic. But I like it.

It portrays the ups and downs of the four major TV channels over a year.

When I see how very prominent and successful these infographics now are, I renew my excitement about their potential in education. There’s no real need to keep changing the content of the curriculum but, instead, look at the format in which it is communicated.

That doesn’t mean simply switching streams of syntax from paper to screen. Not much changes that way.

No, the real difference will be made by switching from a syntax–heavy mode to a visual–syntax combination.

Symbol use

Symbols have been used in special schools for decades. They’ve been a fantastic aid in language development and communication. But from my experience, teachers of children with special needs have a blind spot about their use that limits their effect.

How do I know? Well I was a headteacher of a school for children and young adults with severe, complex and profound learning difficulties for a decade. And I’ve tested out my theory successfully on special educators in countless courses I’ve led.

So, what’s the problem? Take a look at the image below, which is how symbols are pretty universally used: as a word processor.

Now look at an edited version, with the keywords arranged in map fashion — a format you almost never see in use. Which do you think is clearer and easier to communicate? Yes, this one by far.

Why is that? Because the traditional way of communicating symbols is still linear. And, as such, relies on syntax, one of man’s most complex and abstract set of rules. If students in a special school had mastery of syntax, they wouldn’t be there in the first place! So an alternative to syntax is needed.

Which, strangely enough, is exactly what Tina Detheridge the originator of the ubiquitous Writing with Symbols and author of Literacy Through Symbols believes too. In 2006 we co–wrote an article on this subject, Making Ideas Come Alive, for the Special Children magazine. Go to modellearning.com to download the full article.

Space and mental models

Lynne Brindley, the chief executive of the British Library, thinks the physical layout of the local library she used to visit regularly as a child, helped form her mental models. She argues that the physical orientation of the different sections (archaeology, anthropology and so on) provided her with a framework she adopted in her head.

Interviewed in the Education supplement of The Guardian about the diminishing intellectual rigour of new university entrants, Brindley guessed that they don’t spend as much time in libraries, if at all, and so haven’t benefitted from this embodied Dewey system (the arch categoriser).

Instead, the physical structure of the library has been replaced by the web’s hyperlinks. Brindley thinks that while hyperlinks are wonderful they’re insufficient for intellectual maturity. Hyperlinks, you see, are rather like brainstorming — all associations and no framework.

Graphic Organisers provide such a framework and can train the minds of students to develop internal grids of understanding.

All of which brings the cycle full circle. It was the organised minds in the first place that created the organised physical arrangements of the library. That, in turn, as we saw with Lynne Brindley, was absorbed back into someone else’s mind. She then went on to to use her internal organisational frameworks to create organised systems in her own work. Which in turn became absorbed by her students. Organised structures and systems get passed through generations.