Further Interpretation About Visual Thinking Processes in Sessions

This drawing above depicts Visual Thinking processes in sessions: to reach hidden insights deep in people’s minds, come to shared visions and solutions, and finally realize the ideas in practical actions in Visual Thinking sessions. Different from the post: Does the Flow Run only on the Surface or Deep in Minds?, an extended explanation about realizing shared visions into actions is added in the drawing. This conceptual framework in the drawing can therefore be categorized in four major processes and five main stages (See the drawing below).

According to different features in Visual Thinking process, the five major processes are named: Grounding, Diving, Showing, Lifting, and Landing. The four main stages are named: Common Ground (Shared Mental Models), Personal Insights, Shared Visions, and Action.
The five major processes
1. Grounding
In a multi-disciplinary group, Visual Thinking can help to build shared understands in which people can communicate on a common ground. Visual Thinking in this process provides a common language (visual language) and works as a catalyst to create a fluid thinking flow. This process also includes the preparation before the sessions.

2. Diving
Visual Thinkers in this process dive with people to gain the personal insights. Visual Thinkers concentrate on all information they can detect in the process and help participants to gain deeper insights with instant sketches.

3. Showing
Visual Thinkers visualize the personal insights to bring it to the stage, “Shared Mental Models”, where people can really see and discuss each other’s ideas. As a result, the insights can be discussed and be built on with others’ ideas.

4. Lifting
The “Shared Mental Models” can be leveled up to the stage, “Shared vision” through the transformation in Visual Thinking, for example, to give a proper metaphor to describe a potential crisis in the market.

5. Landing
After a team forms a shared vision, the shared vision needs to be developed into a down-to-earth solution. In this process, Visual Thinkers will work with the clients closely to finalize the realistic solution. The “Landing” process can last longer after the session ends.

The four main stages
1. Common ground (Shared Mental Models)
Multi-disciplinary groups need to form shared Mental Models (Common ground) to communicate. The stage is the foundation for a group to talk and work together.

2. Personal insights
The stage, “Personal insights”, is where people’s personal ideas and thinking lie on. The drawings need to connect to people’s personal ideas. Visual thinkers have to work on detecting people’s real thinking and try to associate the different insights with each other.

3. Shared vision
“Shared Vision” is the stage where people share coherent ideas about the issues of the session. This vision is a higher level concept of the shared Mental Models, such as a shared future strategy to an issue. Shared visions in a team take more time to transform and develop in order to reach the core of issue and provide clear motivation for “Action”, compared to shared Mental Models.

4. Action
This stage, “Action”, is where people realize the shared vision in a practical plan. One of the purposes in the Visual Thinking is to eventually create new thinking with drawings which triggers people to action. However, having shared Mental Models is not enough to trigger radical or lasting actions for an organizational change. People need clear motivation with the shared vision.

What is Visual Thinking Process?

This poster is my first step to decipher the Visual Thinking Process. They are originated from JAM as a concept to describe Visual Design Process.

The four steps in Visual Design Process are "Collecting elements", "Finding coherence", "Composition", and "Translation". People shift from one step to another following the flow of thinking. Visual thinkers use multiple techniques to smooth the flow of thinking in a given meeting. The flow breeds abundant benefits both in the process and final result. Please click on "read more" if you want to get more explanation.

1. What is Visual Thinking Process?

Through Visual Thinking, people can solve complex problem in the process. However, what happened in the process is something needs to be deciphered if we want to make a good use of Visual Thinking. I am going to explain the process of Visual Thinking, Visual Thinkers' techniques, and benefits of Visual Thinking in the following pictures.

2. Visual Thinking Process Creates a Flow:
In visual thinking process, there are four steps: "collecting elements", "finding coherence", "composition", and "translation". Collecting elements is when people try to explore and lay out all helpful data on the table. Finding coherence is when people start to find out linkage between data and cluster them. Composition is to figure them out in a bigger and logical scale. Translation is to transfer the result in composition with a meaningful metaphor which can motivate and inspire people in the end.

3. Underlying Flows in Visual Thinking Process:
The process is non-linear and non-rational. The underlying flows in the picture indicate that the process can shift from one loop to another. Instead of running in a linear an one-way route, it is more like cycling in each loop when people try to get more in-depth insights.

4. What do Visual Thinkers Do in the process?
Visual thinkers use multiple techniques to help the flow smooth. People can think more fluid and, instead of being pushed to next loop, slow down their thinking. People can therefore stay in a loop longer until they get enough insights.

5. Benefits of Visual Thinking:
In the process, visual thinkers' techniques help create common ground in a team, which bring benefits both in the process and the result.

The picture is an initial exploration of the power of hand drawing in facilitation workshop. I will try to make it more elaborate in the latter phase of the graduation project. Please feel free to give comments for me to improve them.

What we need as a team while solving complex problem?

When the world is more flat, people faced a more competitive and changeable world. The problem we have is much more complex and unpredictable than before. Therefore, we need more people with different professional knowledge to work together and solve the complex problem. However, it is not an easy task because the collaboration of the multi-disciplinary team is already a hurdle difficult to overcome for the problem-solving process. That is why we need a team to build up shared understanding or Team Mental Model.

What is Mental Model
In order to understand and predict the reality, people structure a simplified model of the world in their mind. This model reflects the individual's perception of the reality, and they work as a "blueprint" for people to deal with uncertainty and unpredictability of the world (see picture above). They do not have to be perfectly matched. People can take the action without getting all necessary information because of possessing mental models.

What is Team Mental Model (TMM)?
As a group level phenomenon (Klimoski, et al. 1994), TMMs allow team members to anticipate one another’s actions and to coordinate their behaviors, especially when time and circumstances do not permit overt and lengthy communication and strategizing among team members (Lim, et al. 2006).There is an elaborated description of the types of the -TMMs, which is purposed by Cannon-Bowers et al. (1993): equipment models, task models, team interaction models and team attribute models.

Equipment models relate to how things (tangible or intangible) function as well as the procedures to make them function and information about the functioning. Task models involve information about the task to be performed, task procedures, likely scenarios, task strategies, and environmental constraints. The team interaction model is the blueprint for how the team works as a team. Finally, the team attribute model contains information about other team members’ knowledge, skills, abilities, preferences, and tendencies.

For example (see picture above), we might call in designers, engineers, financial analyst etc. to deal with a new business problem.

Therefore, they will need to work as a group and share a Team Mental Model for better performance.

First, they need to build mutual understanding about the task (task model) and define what kind of resource and tools they have (equipment model).(see picture above)

Secondly, they will need to share others' expectations and align them (team interaction model) and understand others' abilities, strengths, and weakness (team attribute model).(see picture above)

Finally, the team have built a Team Mental Model and come up with a proper solution because of the Team Mental Model.(see picture above)

What is worth to say here is that these steps to form a TMM are not necessary in this order. It will depend on the environment, team members' previous experience, conditions in the task etc.

My 2nd 10-min presentation in JAM.

Hello all, this is the result of my second 10-min presentation in JAM. The presentation is about 3 aspects: "How to build a Team Mental Model for problem-solving session?", "What is Visual Thinking and Graphic facilitation in terms of benefits and techniques?", and "What are the steps in Visual Thinking Process?"

In a gradually globalizing world, people will need to deal with problems which are more complex and have more people involved. The more complex the issue, the more experts they need. The more experts involve, the more difficulty to integrate them in a given task. The process of problem-solving, itself, simply becomes another tricky, complex problem. For a novel problem, we need to be creative. Therefore, for a novel problem of problem-solving process, we also need creative facilitation to help to cut the time of development of team mental model.

With a coordinated team mental model, a number of studies have already approved that it will result in better team performance. We will need an appropriate facilitation skill to improve the efficiency of the development of team mental model (TMM). And the facilitation can help to produce better team performance. (The theoretical formulation of TMM was depicted in the left-top coner.)

In the workshop, visual thinkers/graphic facilitators use their techniques to create a visual which can not only support people to discuss in the workshop, but also keep inspiring people after the workshop. The techniques would be "observational research", "fast catch", "deep listening", "holistic reflection", and "have your voice". (The techniques of Visual thinkers/graphic facilitators are listed on the left.)

Benefits of VT/GF can then be reveled as "free your mind", "build shared understanding", "keep focus", "engaging", "motivation", "evolving picture", and "people feel be heard". The benefits not only lie in the result of the workshop but in the process. (The benefits of VT/GF are listed in the center of the poster.)

There are two examples to describe the steps of visual thinking. First one is suggested by Dan Roam in the book: "the Back of the Napkin". He pointed out that visual thinking is looking, seeing, imaging, and showing. Second one is JAM visual thinks step. It was described also in four steps: "collecting elements", "finding coherence", "composition", and "translation". I compared these two definition and found that there are some interesting coherence between these two although the first one is more like a basic, personal principle and the second one is based on real practice in JAM. (The visual thinking process is explained in the bottom of the poster.)

I will keep updating the more detailed content of the presentation in other posts! Thanks for all of you who participate and share your thoughts about the presentation!!