List of Literature in this Graduation Project

Here I list the books, paper, and articles which I have referred to in the graduation project. The literature in the list includes three major fields of Visual Thinking: 1. Academic publications written by scholars, such as Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim, Experience in Visual Thinking by Robert H. Mckim. 2. Reflections of international visual practitioners about their practice in business sessions. Feel free to make a use of them.

References

Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual thinking. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press

Brunswik, E. (1956). “Perception and the representative design of psychological experiments”, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Cannon-Bowers, J.A. and Salas, E. (1997). “Teamwork competencies: the intersection of team member knowledge, skills, and attitudes”, Workforce Readiness: Competencies and Assessment, pp. 151-74. O’Neil, H.F. (Ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, Hillsadale, NJ.

Cannon-Bowers, J.A., Salas, E., and Coverse, S. (1993). “Shared mental models in expert team decision making”, Individual and Group Decision Making, pp. 221-46. Castellan, N.J. Jr (Ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, Hillsdale, NJ,

Doyle, M. and Straus, D. (1976). How to Make Meetings Work. New York CA: Jove Publications

Goldstein, E.B. (2001). Sensation and perception, 6th ed. pp. 145-181. Wadsworth, Pacific Grove, CA, USA. ISBN-10: 0534558100

Margulies, N. and Valenza, C. (2005). Visual Thinking Tools for Mapping Your Ideas. Crown House, Bethel, CT, USA. ISBN-10: 1904424562

Horn, R.E. (1998). Visual Language. XPLANE Press, Portland, OR, USA. ISBN-10: 189263709X.

Isaksen, S. G., Dorval, K. B. and Treffinger, D. J. (1994). Creative Approaches to Problem Solving. Kendall and Hunt, Dubuque, IA. ISBN-10: 1882664620

Jeffery, A.B., Maes, J.D., & Bratton-Jeffery M.F. (2005). “Improving team decision-making performance with collaborative modeling”, Team Performance Management, Volume 11, Issue 1/2, pp. 40-50.

Landman R.B., Broek E.L. van den, and Gieskes J.F.B., (2009). “Creating shared mental models: The support of visual language”, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 5738 LNCS, 2009, Pages 161-168

Levin et al. (1987). “On empirically validating functions of pictures in prose”, The psychology of illustration, Volume 1, pp. 51-86. Willows D.M., and Houghton H.A. (Eds), Springer, New York.

Lim, B.-C. & Klein, K.J. (2006). “Team mental models and team performance: a field study of the effects of team mental models similarity and accuracy”, Organizational Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 4, pp. 403-418.

McCloud, S. (2006). Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. HarperCollins, New York. ISBN 9780060780944

Mckim, R. H. (1972). Experience in Visual Thinking. Monterey, California, a division of Wadsworth Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8185-0031-X

Mullen, B., Anthony, T., Salas, E. and Driskell, J.E. (1994). “Group cohesiveness and quality decision making: an integration of tests of the groupthink hypothesis”, Small Group Research, Volume 25, Issue 2, pp.189-204.

Murrey-Bradbury, S. (1995). “How People Use Pictures. IIED: London. Cited from: White, L. (2002). Size Matters: Large Group Methods and the Process of Operational Research”, Operational Research Society, Volume 53, Issue 2, pp. 149-160.

Navon, D. (1977). “Forest Before Trees: The Precedence of Global Features in Visual Perception”, Cognitive Psychology, Volume 9, Issue 3, pp. 353-383.

Norman, D. A. (1983). “Some observations on mental models”. Mental Models, pp. 7-14. Gentner D., and Stevens A.L. (Eds), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, USA

Park, O. and Gittleman, S. S. (1995), “Dynamic characteristics of mental models and dynamic visual displays”, Instructional Science, Volume 23, pp. 303-20.

Pearse, C. (2007). “Technique - Tools graphic facilitation - Putting your people in the picture”, Engineering Management, Volume 17, Issue 5, pp. 12-15.

Resker, P.C., Post, W.M. and Schraage, J.M. (2000). “Effects of two types of intra-team feedback on developing mental models in command and control teams”, Ergonomics, Volume 43, Issue 8, pp. 1167-1189.

Roam, D. (2008). The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England. ISBN 978-1-59184-199-9.

Rouse, W.B., & Morris, N.M. (1986). “On looking into the black box: Prospects and limits in the search for mental models”, Psychological Bulletin, Volume 100, pp. 349-363.

Sanders, E.B.-N. (2001). “Virtuosos of the experience domain”, Proceedings of the 2001 IDSA Education Conference, Boston.

Sleeswijk Visser, F. , Steppers, P.J., van der Lugt, R. and Sanders, E.B.-N. (2005). “Contextmapping: experiences from practice”, CoDesign, Volume 1, Issue 2, pp. 119-149.

Stout, R.J., Cannon-Bowers, J.A., Salas, E. and Milanovich, D. (1999). “Planning, shared mental models, and coordinated performance: an empirical link is established”, Human Factors, Volume 41, Issue 1, pp. 61-88.

Tassoul, M. (2006). Creative Facilitation: a Delft approach. VSSD, Leegwaterstraat 42, 2628 CA Delft, the Netherlands. ISBN 90-71301-46-X.

Tyler, C., Valek, L., and Rowland R. (2005). “Graphic Facilitation and Large-Scale Interventions: Supporting Dialogue Between Cultures at a Global, Multicultural, Interfaith Event”, Applied Behavioral Science, Volume 41, pp. 139-152.

Valenza, C. and Adkins, J. (2009). “Understanding Visual Thinking: The History and Future of Graphic Facilitation”, Interaction, Volume 16, Issue 4, 1 July 2009, pp. 38-43.

Van der Lugt, R. (2000). “Developing a graphic tool for creative problem solving in design groups”, Design Studies, Volume 21, Issue 5, pp. 505-522

Van der Lugt, R. (2002). “Functions of Sketching in Design Idea Generation Meetings”, Proceedings of the Fourth Creativity and Cognition Conference, pp. 72-79

Van der Lugt, R. (2005). “How sketching can affect the idea generation process in design group meetings”, Design Studies, Volume 26, Issue 2, pp. 101-112

Westbrook, L. (2006). “Mental models: a theoretical overview and preliminary study”, Information Science, Volume 32, Issue 6, 563-570.

Agerbeck B., (2004). Intro to graphic facilitation. Retrieved July 2, 2009, from http://www.loosetooth.com/Viscom/intro.htm

Ball, G. (1998). “Graphic Facilitation focuses a group's thoughts”. Consensus, 1998 April. A newspaper published jointly by the Consensus Building Institute and the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program. Retrieved Dec 22, 2009, from http://www.mediate.com/articles/ball.cfm

XPLANE, (2009). About: We visualize clarity. Retrieved June 30, 2009, from http://www.xplane.com/company/about/

Historical Division between "Logical thinking" and "Visuals"

Rudolf Arnheim suggested a historical division between "Logical thinking" and "Visuals" in his ground-breaking book, Visual Thinking (1969). He pointed out that philosophers in ancient Greek credited the direct vision as the start and end source of wisdom although they also learned possible distortion in human’s visual perception (Arnheim, 1969. pp. 12).
However, hundreds of years later, the potential of using sketching in creative problem solving are still paid less attention. Sketching is often not considered as a form of thinking. In his book, Visual Thinking, Arnheim (1969. pp. 2-3) reflected on the issue as the followed:

“Today, the prejudicial discrimination between perception and thinking is still with us. We shall find it in examples from philosophy and psychology. Our entire educational system continues to be based on the study of words and numbers … More and more the arts are considered as a training in agreeable skills, as entertainment and mental release. As the ruling disciplines stress more rigorously the study of words and numbers, their kinship with the arts is increasingly obscured, and the arts are reduced to a desirable supplement…. The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought. In fact, educators and administrators cannot justify giving the arts an important position in the curriculum unless they understand that the arts are the most powerful means of strengthening the perceptual component without which productive thinking is impossible in any field of endeavor. The neglect of the arts is only the most tangible symptom of the widespread unemployment of the senses….”

Nowadays, most of us still follow similar path in contemporary educational system and are serious about producing solutions in neat computer graphics or a profound report. But Visual Thinking, as a young facilitation method in group sessions, begins to bridge the creative qualities of instant sketches in business practice.

An idea of individual visual thinking process

An idea of Individual visual thinking process has been suggested by Rober H. Mckim in the book, Experience in Visual Thinking (1972).

"The overlapping circles can be taken to represent a wide variety of interactions. Where seeing and drawing overlap, seeing facilitates drawing, while drawing invigorates seeing. Where drawing and imagining overlap, drawing stimulates and expresses imagining, while imagining provides impetus and material for drawing. Where imagining and seeing overlap, imagination directs and filters seeing, while seeing, in turn, provides raw material for imagining. The three overlapping circles symbolize the idea that visual thinking is experienced to the fullest when seeing, imagining, and drawing merge into active interplay." (Mckim, R.H. 1972. p.6)

He pictured the activities, whether they are “perceptual, inner, and graphic images”, as three kinds of visual imagery: “Seeing”, “Imaging”, and “Drawing”. The three are interacted in a fluid and dynamic way practiced as an active interplay. People keep cycling through the overlapped visual imagery until the problems are solved. And this is a nature of people when a truck driver is driving through a busy traffic, when a football coach considers a new strategy, when a lady plans what to wear, and when an architect describes a new concept to his client.

"Visual Thinking pervades all human activity, from the abstract and theoretical to the down-to-earth and everyday." (Mckim, R.H. 1972. p.6)

This idea can be compared with the one proposed by Dan Roam in the book, The back of the Napkin.

"The Back of the Napkin", by Dan Roam

This is a book about visual thinking in an everybody-can-do-it way. With a pen, a piece of napkin and your bare hand, you are already equipped enough to solve all of the problems you can image even they are as complex as a modern business problem. The drawing power has manifested itself in this book with a series of interesting and meaningful stories and, of course, a lot of illustrations.

One of the best thing I learned here is that, even though you think you can't draw, you can still use the visual thinking as a powerful problem-solving tool. As a reader, you can easily tell how complex business problems can be solved with such simple hand drawings. And there is no magic in this process. Everyone can simply follow Dan Roam's guides in the book to start their own visual thinking adventure with no burden.

In this book, another interesting thing I found is the four steps of visual thinking process, which are "Looking", "Seeing", "Imaging", and "Showing". "Looking" is like you browse through the room when you step in a party. "Seeing" is like you notice some familiar faces. "Imaging" is that you think what will happen if you go to them. "Showing" is to choose one girl you know to go to because you are most willing to do so. I think here the four steps of visual thinking process are the basic principles I am looking for. I always believed visual thinking is indeed originated from some really basic and simple principles, which are "built-in" in human beings.

Again, there is no magic. However, we need this kind of book to make us be aware of this "built-in" super power, or we just waste our natural talents.

Check out the short introduction video on youtube. Or a longer presentation given by Dan Roam about "the Back of the Napkin".

Last but not least, it is so interesting to see underlying connections (or similarities) between Dan Roam's Visual Thinking Process and Visual Design Process in JAM visual thinking. Just like the picture above, "Collecting elements" is "Looking". "Finding coherence" is "Seeing". "Composition" is "Imaging". "Translation" is "Showing". It is so evident that the visual thinking process described here really makes sense in both personal experience and real practice. This is indeed a simple, basic principle lying in our nature.

There is also a Chinese (Traditional) version: 餐巾紙的背後 available in Taiwan now.