Solving Problems with Visual Thinking

The Back of the Napkin Workshop Solving Problems with Pictures Dan Roam MIX08 :: UX03 :: March 5, 2008 :: The Venetian

2008 © Dan Roam THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN all rights reserved 6 a) I’m in a brainstorming session in a conference room that has a big whiteboard. I want to: Go to the board, pick up a pen and start drawing circles and boxes. Try to decipher whatever is already written on the board. Go to the board and start writing categorized lists. Add a little clarification to what’s already up there – you know, to make it clearer. Forget the whiteboard – come on here, people, we’ve got work to do! I hate brainstorming sessions.

2008 © Dan Roam THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN all rights reserved 7 b) Someone hands me a pen and asks me to sketch out a particular idea. I: Ask for more pens, preferably in at least three colors. Just start sketching and see what emerges. Say, “I can’t draw, but…” and then make a horrible stick figure. Start by writing a few words, then putting boxes around them. Put the pen on the table and start talking. Say, “No thanks, I can’t draw”, and leave it at that.

2008 © Dan Roam THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN all rights reserved 8 c) Someone hands me a complicated spreadsheet and asks me to look it over. I first: Glaze over and hope it will go away. Flip through the pages and see if something – I dunno, whatever – pops up. Read across the top of the columns or down each row in order, to identify the categories. Select a row and column at random and follow them to the data cell, then look for similar (or different) data results in other cells. Look for the largest or smallest values I can find, then trace them back to identify them. Notice that OPEX variance to budget is down for the second quarter in a row.

2008 © Dan Roam THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN all rights reserved 9 d) On my way home from a conference, I see a cute fellow attendee at the airport cafe, and he or she asks me what I do. I: Grab a napkin and ask the waiter if I can borrow a pen. Pick up three packs of Sweet-n-Low, lay them on the bar, point to one and say, “Okay, this is me over here, and this is the customer over here…” Pull out a page from my PowerPoint deck – a really good page – and start walking through it. Start to recite my original job description: “There are three things that I do…”. “What I do? Well, better buy another round, because we’re going to be talking a while.” Say it’s too complicated to explain well, but ask him/her the same question.

2008 © Dan Roam THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN all rights reserved 10 f) I’m an astronaut floating in space. The first thing I do is: Take a deep breath, relax, and take in the whole view. Pull out my camera. Try to spot my house… or at least my continent. Start describing what I see. Close my eyes. Find a way to get back into my spacecraft.

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2008 © Dan Roam, all rights reserved 33 The 4 steps of visual thinking: What is out there? What am I looking at? What are the limits? Which way is up? What do I see? Have I seen this before? What patterns emerge? What stands out? What seems to be missing? How can I manipulate these patterns? Can I fill in the gaps? Have I seen enough – or do I need to go back and look at more? This is what I saw, and this is what I think it means. Is this what I expected… or not? When you look at this, do you see the same things?

Solving Problems with Visual Thinking

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