Start with a piece of blank paper and a pen

Image how children doodle on a piece of blank paper. Drawing lives since you sense that you are creating something. The fun spreads when the results are shown. It is also a time for sharing and responding. The essence of hand drawings lies in inviting people to see and share.

As an adult, we lose that ability to draw for different reasons. We are in pursuit of something more sophisticated to solve problems. We are so serious about producing solutions presented in neat computer graphics or a profound report. We ignore the truly sparkles of our wisdom which happened in the process. Visual Thinking/Graphic Facilitation (VT/GF) offers a way to help people reflect deep and respond openly in the process. If we want to duplicate the inspiring and evoking moments in the other sessions, we will have to find out how VT/GF triggers people being more creative and involved.

Nowadays, there are many terms in general using to describe what the graphic professional does when visually representing a group’s process. Some call “visual thinking”, “graphic facilitation”, “graphic recording”, and “graphic consultancy”. For the purpose of this study, the approach will be called Visual Thinking/Graphic Facilitation (VT/GF) in the fact that these two terms are mostly chosen by the facilitation companies internationally.

My 10-min in JAM!

On May 29th, I gave a 10-min presentation to JAMers about what triggered me to do this project, what I am going to do, and what I dream to do.
It's not that easy for me, and I would not say I am satisfied with my performance. It could be far more better. However, thanks to JAMers' kindness and generousness. They behaved less critical than I expected and gave me very constructive ideas. Then here are the presentation ...

There are four major elements in the presentation, which are 2 surprises, 1 question mark, and a dream. They formed the story why I am here in JAM doing my graduation project.

The first surprise will have to trace back to six months ago. I was in Venice to visit the Biennale Architecture exhibition. In the Japanese pavilion, It was a strong impact to me about the drawing power. When I stepped into the pavilion, it just looked like a new house with no furniture but only big, white walls. However, when I walked closer to the walls, I was surprised by the extremely detailed and delicate pencil drawings which covered all over the walls. To me, the drawings are calm but passionate, and quiet but powerful. They are naive but free all minds in the pavilion with their imagination. This was the first time I experienced such a direct and overwhelming power of hand drawings. (more about Japanese pavilion...)

About two weeks later, there were the second surprise waiting in the TUDelft IOB job market. That was where I met Dennis and had a very good impression of what JAM are doing. It surprised me that they conducted a business to help people communicate with their drawings. This impression just reminded me of the impact I had in the Japanese pavilion. This surprise gave me the idea to conduct a graduation project with them to know better of the drawing power and how to use it.

Fortunately, after several months, I am here in JAM now. However, the JAM are like a puzzle for me to decipher and read. But I do want to talk about my dream first instead of describing how to reach it. Since I can realize there are values of hand drawings through the research, I hope that I can make something to promote advantages of visual thinking in group communication. On the one hand, they could be an encyclopedia for people to explore the beauty of the drawing power in visual thinking. On the other hand, if it is set as an online website, it could not only influence other people but also receive suggestions and opinions. In this two-way interaction, it could therefore evolve themselves with time and prevent to be limited in certain presumption.

For the question mark, this is about how will I conduct the project in JAM. I think I will use another 10 mins to decribe them, but it would be in the next 10-min presentation. See you then...

Thanks to Dennis, he also filmed the presentation. You can see the video here.

An Unexpected Sparkle in a Job Market

The very beginning idea of the graduation project is in a job market, which called IOB, where I met Dennis there. We had a very interesting discussion there. I thought that the way JAM is doing now is something I would like to do in the future. I meant that it is so relevant to help people to across the barriers of misunderstandings and build up shared understandings, especially in a "globalizing" world.

Nowadays, people have less time to communicate but have to deal with more issues in more diverse groups, i.e. cultural difference, professional background, religious difference, etc. Using a hand drawing skill to cope with the problems is a powerful idea to eliminate gaps in diverse groups. As a basic "language" or "platform" for an efficient meeting, hand drawings are naive and unfinished, compared to computer graphics, but open to interpret.

JAM help people to speak out-loud and to use their imagination freely with the hand drawings. People will not be afraid of offending others or embarrassing themselves, and that is just an ideal start of an efficient meeting.

It is also interesting for me to know how they turn a personal interest into a real business. So I just started to try out to do a graduation project in JAM. And, fortunately, I got the chance to give it a try and dedicate myself in this field.