A Talk with Guido.

Last Friday, I had a nice company on the train back to Delft. Guido Kuip is an illustrator, industrial designer, and visual communicator. He has worked in JAM visual thinking for several months as a part-time job. It was quiet pleasing to share his experience in JAM as a visual communicator. Here I took some notes on the picture. You can see a detailed description in the article.

In his experience in the visual thinking/graphic facilitation workshop, he thinks that:
1. Demanding and energy-consuming:
The work as visual communicators (thinkers) is demanding and energy-consuming. They have to extremely focus on observing people's talking and behavior, interpreting, and translating them into visuals.

2. Excellent drawing skills DON'T guarantee a good visual communicator:
Good drawing skills can make a picture attractive and clear, but it is just part of qualities of a good visual thinker. The picture should be also informative or intensive (Thanks for Wouter's suggestion. It was from a quote in Scoot McCloud's book.). That means a good visual thinker should be open to observe and reflect on participants' opinions.

3. Experience DOES matter in facilitation workshops:
Experienced visual thinkers can interpret, and pick up a "right" thing in a complex group discussion, and furthmore translate it in a "simple" and "understandable" metaphor.

4. Crappy drawing within context V.S. Beautiful drawing without context:
A crappy drawing could be very meaningful since it is right in the discussion. However, a beautiful drawing done after workshops could be meaningless since it loses the links to the context.

5. Visual thinkers are always out-going and open-minded:
Sometimes, people could be very passive because of reserved personalities or being unfamiliar with each other. In this case, visual thinkers have to intervene and try to help them break the ice. So the visual thinkers can not always be passive in the workshops.