JAMmers' Characteristics

The characteristics of the JAMmers in this chart are based on Wouter's and Jeroen's findings as they prepared for the JAM school. Here I summarized them in two dimensions, which are "Hard and Soft" and "Outward and Inward".

Personally, I see different personalities in JAM. Somehow they do share some characteristics, like sympathetic, eager to help, energetic, open-minded and humor. But none of them have all of the characteristics in the chart. There are some difference in between them. And these also lead to the difference on how they perform their Visual Thinking method in the sessions.

Focus of the Project in JAM's Work Categories

After the five-year practicing, this year (2009) is a watershed for JAM visual thinking to rethink their future strategy in Visual Thinking. The categories of their previous projects indicate what they are capable to do and how much involvement of the Visual Thinking method are in each category. The involvement here means the degree that JAM visual thinking can be part in the problem-solving process with their clients.

Almost the JAMmers graduated from the Industrial Design faculty in Delf University of Technology. Designer-orientation minds motivate JAMmers to consider more about the solutions for their clients instead of being a fast and reflective drawer only producing pretty drawings. The idea triggers JAM to put their strategic focus on group sessions and long-term projects .

In the graduation project, I chose the Visual Thinking group sessions as the focus of the study because, on one hand, the group sessions can provide a holistic reflection with the effectiveness of Visual Thinking, and, on the other hand, the long-term projects need longer time to follow and more aspects to observe which can hardly scale in a 23-week research.

Strategy Week in JAM!

This year, 2009, is the fifth year of JAM visual thinking. As a company, they are still as young as the babies in the field of Visual Thinking. They are still curious about everything and trying every possibilities in the Visual Thinking world. They are also wondering what their next steps are. They have numerous questions in their heads and numerous tools in their hands now. So... Maybe the first step for JAM is to jam everything together...

In the final day of the strategy week, Dennis, Mike, and Wouter brought the clay on the table. Through the clay sculpturing, we shared others' thoughts and dreams. Finally, we were jamming together to be an "one" again.

Let's wait and see what would be born in the jamming ball!

Barricades in the Way of Thinking Flows and Ways to Deal with Them

We have discussed the reasons why more issues should be explored further in the previous post. Here is the first issue. We need to explore the types of barricades happening in the process which block the thinking flows. If they cannot fully solve the problems happening here, that would be definitely jeopardizing to the contributions of VT/GF.

I assume that, for different individual Visual Thinker/Graphic Facilitator, the techniques will alter depending on their personalities, their backgrounds, and the real situations which are the composition of the team, the environment, etc. We need to ask: What kind of preparation will Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators do before the sessions? How do they deal with the barricades in the process? Will they pump into more energy to break them through, or use special skills to jump over them, or simply make a new path to bypass?

Does the Flow Run only on the Surface or Deep in Minds?

We have discussed the reasons why more issues should be explored further in the previous post. We discussed the first issue: barricades in the way of thinking flow. It is also interesting to know that, even though VT/GF is to create a fluid thinking flow, the flow is just running on the surface, or it can run deeper to bring out profound insights, which is truly the goal of VT/GF.
On the one hand, without in-depth insights being aroused, the drawings will be disconnected with participants and become meaningless no matter how beautiful they are. These drawings in the process, in the case, are not working as catalysts. In terms of the results, the disconnected drawings will not showcase valid findings in sessions and cannot lead stakeholders to the vision they want to bring.

On the other hand, one of the unique features of VT/GF, “Speeding up by slowing down first”, is a proper example to represent the benefits of running deep. It will take some time to get in-depth insights in the thinking process until people get enough insights. However, if the flow is too fast, people will simply drift fluidly on the surface to the end. This efficient process will not guarantee a thorough solution because the process is not reflective to every one’s thoughts in mind. The final result in this case functions as a “decoration” rather than a “transformation” (see Visualization helps learning).

For Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators, their experiences on this issue will be elaborated in the angles of what kinds of factors affect most, how Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators evaluate the process, and how they evaluate the outcomes. For clients, their feedback will be asked and evaluated in case studies.

Issues Need to Be Explored in the Following Researches.

This theoretical framework of Visual Thinking/Graphic Facilitation represented a model under ideal situations in sessions. However, we still need to know more about how Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators react to the setbacks which block or stagnate the creative thinking in process, and what kind of factors will affect most when things go wrong. Many facilitation techniques already focus a lot on the implementation of icebreakers in multi-disciplinary teams, and the techniques to develop proper Infographics to report the results. There are also many how-to-do tool books in Visual Thinking/Graphic Facilitation, but there is still lack of researches on limitations of VT/GF and solutions to them in the progress.
There are other issues with a value to apply further researches. First, what are the barricades in the way of thinking flows and ways to deal with them? Secondly, is the thinking Flow running on the surface or deep in minds? A further explanation to these two issues will be given in the following sections.

How does Visual Tinking help people in sessions?

This table demonstrates a quick comparison of Visual Thinking Process, Visual Design Process, Techniques in Visual Thinking/Graphic (VT/GF) Facilitation Sessions, and Benefits in VT/GF Sessions in terms of time passing by in sessions. It suggests that Visual Design Process (JAM visual thinking, 2009) in VT/GF is developed on a simple and basic individual Visual Thinking Process (Roam, D. 2008). Visual Design Process is a group-level thinking process which inherits the intuitive nature of individual Visual Thinking Process. Participants as a group in the sessions can process the information in their minds as they have done numerous times in daily time.

Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators also follow similar pattern to make a good use of appropriate techniques in each stage of Visual Design Process. For example, they use “Observation skills” to collect relevant and/or subtle information in the discussion. They quickly select out all these elements and draw them in front of participants with the technique, “Fast catch: word and image”. “Observation skills” and “Fast catch: word and image” create a common ground for “Collecting elements” and “Finding coherence”. As time goes by, the technique, “Deep listening: story and metaphor” help participants to compose of the words and images into coherent stories and/or metaphors as the base of “Composition”. “Holistic reflection” finally paves a way for Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators to create a living document which is based on Team Mental Models or shared understanding in the sessions.

Visual thinking process is non-linear and non-rational, which is a proper ground for breeding creativity. Eventually, the thinking flow empowered by VT/GF techniques will bring fruity benefits to individual participants and teams in the sessions, and to stakeholders and employees after the sessions.

5 Pillars to Build Team Mental Models.

Jeffery et al. (2005) suggested the following 5 advices for building team mental models:

1. Clarification of team objectives and tasks, environment and variables.
Team members clarify objectives and tasks and identify collaborative modeling and effective communications as team goals. Open and thorough discussion builds understanding of each other and exercises the collaboration and communication process (Jeffery et al., 2005).

2. Establishing roles and responsibilities.
Clarifying team member roles and responsibilities should be accomplished after the team defines team objectives and the tasks necessary to accomplish the objectives and sets collaborative modeling and effective communications as team goals. This requires the development of team interaction models that represent a blueprint for how the team works as a team (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993).

3. Information processing, communication, and collaborative modeling rules and procedures.
Team members should address techniques they will use for communicating, feedback, and sharing mental models in order to accomplish team objectives (Jeffery et al., 2005).

4. Knowledge of team members’ background and style.
Team members need to understand other team members’ knowledge, skills, abilities, preferences, strengths, weakness, and tendencies (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993).

5. Collaborative modeling scheme.
This plan includes rules and procedures for articulating individual models and the process the team will use to develop a shared mental model (Jeffery et al., 2005).

These imperatives indicate important milestones in the facilitation sessions, which Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators can follow in the progress. Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators can make a certain checklist based on these five imperatives to make sure they put their efforts efficiently on rather important things. Then the participants can work together better because of the creation of the fundamental agreement on criteria of the task, personal roles, ways of common communication, each others’ backgrounds and styles, and a collaborative scheme to develop TMMs.

According to these imperatives, Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators in this process also need to introduce their roles and functions to the participants. They have to make sure that the participants understand proper rules of VT/GF in the process in order to avoid miss-led information and make the best out of VT/GF.

Two Hand Drawing Animations

Strawberry Swing by Coldplay

MUTO by Blublu.org

Enjoy them!

What is Visaul Thinking/Graphic Facilitation?

Visual Thinkers in group sessions can distinguish from people's complex thoughts to a clear and still meaningful graphics instantly. They are just like a prism that divide the white light into several colors.

In terms of an individual, Roam D. (2008) defined visual thinking as taking advantage of our innate ability to see—both with our eyes and with our mind’s eye—in order to discover ideas that are otherwise invisible, develop those ideas quickly and intuitively, and then share those ideas with other people in a way that they simply “get”.

In the practice, there are many definitions of VT/GF published online. Here I summarized the quotes of some opinion leaders in the field: XPLANE, founded in 1993, is the most well-known and pioneering visual thinking consultancy companies in the America. Chris Pearse, co-founder of the Clarity Partnership, wrote a paper, “Putting People in Your Picture”, with profound knowledge about VT/GF in practice. Brandy Agerbeck, an experienced graphic facilitator in the America, provided valuable insights as an active visual practitioner in her career. JAM visual thinking had actively involved with the ideas to inspire people what VT/GF is and how to use it for years in the Netherlands.

To sum up their interpretations of VT/GF, Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators are the visual and usually silent partners, compared to the traditional verbal facilitators (Agerbeck B., 2004). They take part in sessions and together translate people’s project into a clear and large scale image in real-time (JAM visual thinking, 2008). Visual Thinkers/Graphic Facilitators provide people an efficient means to make sense of complex issues (Pearse, C., 2007) by taking advantage of our innate abilities. People can simply get information by receiving it visually. And VT/GF in this sense is not a solution for these issues but rather a catalyst (Pearse, C., 2007) to accelerate understandings (XPLANE, 2009) in front of a large group.

Drawings reflect on Visual Thinkers’/Graphic Facilitators’ minds when they collect the general and specific senses of everyone in a given session. VT/GF is a powerful tool of recognition for everyone (Agerbeck B., 2004). These drawings can pave the way to understand each other in a complex reality and lead people to a right decision and taking actions (XPLANE, 2009).