There are only 3 days left on our call for sessions for VizThink Europe ‘08 in Berlin on 12 October - 14 October. We’re looking for the best of the best facilitators for our event. Do you have something to share? Be sure to get your idea in now. Our facilitators get free registration to our event.
As you may have noticed in our earlier post today, June 25th is VizThink’s one-year anniversary. One of the questions we get most often is, “How did VizThink get started?”. So, we thought this might be a good time to re-tell that story:
The story begins quite a while before June 25th, 2007. Dave Gray, Chairman of Xplane, has been working with visual thinking professionally for over 15 years. During that time though, his work has been about more than just starting a company. He wanted to see visual thinking become a movement, a game changer, a community. If you’ve ever gotten an e-mail from Dave, you can see a sampling of some of those communities. One of the earliest web-based efforts was a lens on Squidoo from December 2005. As you might suspect, starting (and maintaining) a community is a lot more work than it seems. It takes both time and money.
In September of 2006, Ryan Coleman attended a small public workshop that Dave held in Toronto. Ryan had much experience in the Toronto community with BarCamps and other “un-conference” movements. in By February 2007, inspired by Dave’s idea for a Visual Thinking School, Ryan started a group he dubbed VizThink Toronto which now has 30-50 people for each gathering and covers a wide range of visual thinking topics.
Later in the Spring of 2007, Dave was in Spain launching the Xplane office in Madrid. During that time he worked with Rodolfo Carpintier, President of Digital Assets Deployment, a business incubator focused on companies whose competitive edge is based on powerful networks created by communities. In one of their many discussions, Dave shared his idea for a visual thinking community. Sharing a similar idea and passion, Rodolfo suggested a business that reached a global market and decided to fund what was to become VizThink. So, with the money in place, the search began to put the team in place.
Dave reached out to his extensive network, which happened to include Jay Cross, the Informal Learning guru from Berkeley, California. Jay made the connection with Tom Crawford who he had worked with in the e-Learning field. After several discussions with Dave and Rodolfo, Tom was hired as CEO of the fledgling company. On the morning of June 25th, 2007, Dave, Tom, and Rodolfo met in Portland to kick off the business. Nearly all of the first 3 days were spent in brainstorming, ideation, discussion, and sometimes debate: What constitutes visual thinking? What does the community look like? Who are visual thinkers? How do you grow a community? Can a community be sustainable? If so, how long does it take? What should the business model be? What kind of team needs to be in place? How much money is needed? By when? What are the possibilities when this is successful? What does success look like?
At the end of the third day, it seemed that they had lots of information, but were no closer to an answer. And then it happened, the spark of an idea. The answer was an association model…a membership and a series of events. That idea launched what became the business model for VizThink. Work began immediately on the first event, VizThink ‘08, by brainstorming facilitators, topics, sponsors, locations, logistics, and budgets.
Of course, as with any other start up, many other things had to be put in place…bank accounts, credit, business plan, budgets, strategic plans, logo, e-mail, website, blog, systems and all the other infrastructure that goes along with running a business. In August of 2007, while on a long weekend in upstate New York, Tom ran into Chris Pascucci, a former colleague with significant experience in technology infrastructure, event production, and event technology. Chris joined VizThink in October of that year and began immediate work on the technology needs of the company.
We ran our first (and only to date) print ad, in the October (final) issue of Business 2.0. The rest of our marketing was done virally through e-mail, blog posts, and word of mouth. In late December 2008, the future looked dark for VizThink, with only about 200 people signed up for the inaugural event, even breaking even seemed a distant possibility. But things were about to change dramatically. Right after the new year, registrations increased exponentially. By the time we arrived in San Francisco at the end of January, VizThink ‘08 had almost 400 people in attendance. We even had to have additional print runs done of the materials and several extra trips to the office supply store (conveniently located across the street). VizThink ‘08 wasn’t just a success in numbers, but also in content. With almost 40 facilitators, we pulled the best of the best from our industry, each volunteering their time because of their passion for visual thinking.
VizThink ‘08 was also where we ran into Ryan again. He had already agreed to help as a volunteer with starting up other communities like Toronto. He was even one of our facilitators for a very popular conference breakout session. Over the next few months and after several discussions, Ryan joined VizThink in May of 2008 to help us grow the community. He’s responsible for assisting the regional groups like Toronto, Austin, and London, adding more communities, growing the virtual community on our social network, and evangelizing visual thinking to the broader community.
We’re pretty excited, for sure, not only about making it to the one-year mark, but also all the things we have planned for the next year and beyond. In less than a week, just about 1 year to the day after the start of the company, we’ll be launching our next major phase…an online community of visual thinkers. This social network will be a place that visual thinkers from around the globe can go to find others like them, to share ideas, to find tools, to research companies, and to contribute to the growth of this industry. We’re also deep into planning both VizThink Europe ‘08, VizThink North America ‘09, multiple workshops, and several new regional communities. It’s a busy and exciting time at VizThink. We can’t wait to see what the future holds.
We believe that in today´s rush, companies need to move faster than in the past. The move from long memos and painful presentations to quick and easy visual explanations is a must. Our goal is to drive the revolution in the way people communicate, create understanding, and move to action. We want to create thousands of new professional jobs for visual thinkers worldwide, both as employees of large corporations and as independent producers. We look forward to partnering with each of you to grow the network and grow all of our skills.
We want to take this time to thank Dave, Rodolfo, our facilitators, our sponsors, our attendees, and especially you for your involvement in making VizThink and the visual thinking community a success. Without you, none of this would be possible. Here’s to another exciting year and many more after that!
Sincerely,
Your friends and colleagues at VizThink
Today, June 25, 2008, is VizThink’s official one-year anniversary! So, we thought we would use today to share a little bit more about us. One of the things many of you may not know about VizThink is that we’re a completely virtual company. While the business address is in Portland, Oregon, none of the team is actually based in there. Including our contractors, we’re spread out all over the world. Most of the time, it works really well. Technologies like eMail, chat, web conferencing, cellphones, Skype, and of course telephones make it work, generally.
For some things though, being a virtual company makes it a little harder. So, when it came to planning the anniversary, we had a dilemma. How do we celebrate? Ryan’s in Toronto, Chris is in upstate New York, and Tom is in Ann Arbor. We brainstormed lots of ideas and finally decided that we should have a wholesome party and share some ice cream:
Then, we thought, “Is that how we would really celebrate?”:
Regardless of you celebrate, we had a lot of fun and want to take this moment to thank you–our readers, our attendees, and our community. Without you, work wouldn’t be so fun. Without you, we wouldn’t have a purpose. Without you, we wouldn’t exist. So, thank you so much for your involvement. We look forward to many more years of exciting happenings in the visual thinking community.
Later today, we’ll share a even more about us with a brief look at our history. For now, help us celebrate both our first year and, hopefully, many more. Feel free to leave a comment below, or post your celebration picture to Flickr with the tag vtanniversary1.
Mark your calendars to join us on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 for another VizThink webinar. Join Jamie Nast and Chuck Frey as we talk about mind mapping. Jamie is a mind mapping expert who teaches a variety of related classes, plus is the author of the very successful book, Idea Mapping Success. Chuck is the author of the single best site for information on mind mapping and the associated tools, Innovation Tools. Here are just a few of the things we’ll discuss:
Here are the details:
Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Time: 8am Pacific/11am Eastern/4pm British Summer Time/5pm Central European Summer Time
Length: 1 Hour
Cost: FREE
Technology Requirements: You will need both an Internet and Phone connection, detailed instructions will be provided in a confirmation e-mail. Some numbers will be long distance, so we incourage you to use Skype or other IP Telephony to connect to the call using any of the numbers provided in the e-mail.
Recording: This session will be recorded and posted for free to our blog (http://www.vizthink.com/blog) within two days after the webinar.
Register Now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/305105208
Also, don’t forget to comment on our related post…Mind Mapping: Share your unique uses of the technique and you could win! The prize for the best response will be given out during the webinar. Details on how to respond can be found on that blog post.
We’re pleased to announce that on July 25, 2008, Dave Gray - visual communication guru and founder of XPLANE - is coming back Toronto, as part of VizThink’s ongoing series of workshops.
During this workshop Dave will show you how to visualize your ideas so you can think and communicate with greater clarity and effectiveness. Working individually and in small teams, you will learn and practice visualization techniques that have been successfully used to improve innovation and accelerate change at some of the world’s leading companies. After completing this workshop you will have a toolkit for thinking and presentation effectiveness — your presentations of complex information and strategies will never be the same.
An accomplished facilitator, Dave has presented at conferences and facilitated visual thinking oriented workshops around the world. His unique style delivers an engaging, interactive workshop that will open your mind to a variety of new techniques and approaches that will help make you an even better visual communicator.
Regardless of your visual communication experience you’ll gain valuable new insights and take a new suite of tools home from this day long workshop. You’ll come away equipped to tackle the challenges of communicating information, ideas or processes to colleagues, clients or potential customers in a whole new, and probably more effective way.
To ensure all of our participants can get the most out of the session and maintain an intimate learning environment space is very limited for this workshop. It’s been almost three years since Dave’s last full workshop in Toronto, and we can’t be sure when he’ll be back, so don’t miss this opportunity to spend a day learning from one of the top visual thinking guru’s in the industry.
Workshop Details
Friday, July 25, 2008 - 9:00am - 5:00pm
Workshop Fee: $400
Bell Trinity Square,
South Tower
483 Bay St, Ground Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5G 2E1
Canada
Earlier this week, we had the opportunity to sit down with Martin Eppler, Professor of Information and Communication Management at the University of Lugano in Switzerland. He has written eight books, mostly on knowledge communication, management, and visualization. His latest book is Ways of Knowing. You can learn more about his university work on their website. In addition, they have created visual literacy tutorials and software package that uses templated visual tools for brainstorming, planning, and organization.
During this 33 minute discussion, we cover a range of topics such as:
What is collaborative knowledge visualization?
How is it used and what are the benefits and disadvantages?
What tools and techniques are available to get started?
Use the navigation below the video to jump to the segment of interest.
Hint: Use the Full Screen Button 
to see this video in greater detail.
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You may also download the audio here…
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Thanks again to everyone who contributed to last month’s question on PowerPoint & Presentations - to see the responses & find out who won visit our post here - This month we’re turning our sights on the technique of Mind Mapping.
Question of the Month
Mind Mapping at it’s core is a very simple structure but over the years people have taken the idea and run with it, using it in all kinds of useful, weird and wonderful ways - which takes us to the question for this month:
In what unique way do you use Mind Maps (or have you seen them used)?
Share your examples on your blog or post them on a site like Flickr. Post a sample, describe how you’re using the Mind Map techniques and what your results have been. Tag your items “VizThinkMM” and put a link to this post so we can easily find your submission.
Win! - Our Webinar panel’s favorite contribution will receive a copy of MindManager Pro 7 for Windows or MindManager 7 Mac (depending on the winner’s platform preference) courtesy of Mindjet. It’s a great piece of software that anyone using mind maps will find a valuable addition to their computer.
Upcoming Webinar
In the next week or so we’ll also be announcing our next webinar to correspond with this month’s topic. We’ve got some great speakers lined up and we’re just nailing down the final details - watch our blog for an announcement post shortly.
Random Draw
This month we’ll also be offering a draw prize for someone who registers for & attends our mind mapping webinar. The lucky winner will receive a copy of Jamie Nast’s “Idea Mapping Success
Wow. What a session. In our largest webinar to date, Nancy Duarte, principal of Duarte Design and one of the guru’s behind Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation , took over 135 people through her advice & thoughts on how to create powerful presentations.
Miss it?
You’re in luck! We’ve packaged it up and posted it below for viewing at your leisure.
We have a regular series of podcasts and webinars with leading visual thinkers, like Nancy Duarte, from around the world. Be sure you don’t miss future events by subscribing to our blog, or better yet, signing up for our mailing list so you’ll get the announcements as they happen.
Creating Powerful Presentations
Hint: Use the Full Screen Button to see this video in greater detail.
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You may also download the audio here…
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Presentation Resources
During the webinar Nancy mentioned several online resources which we’ve included here below for your reference.
What’s Next?
Next month we’ll be turning our focus to Mind Mapping - we’ll have another Question of the month, along with another great webinar with some leading Mind Mapping practitioners. We’re just nailing down the final details and will have an announcement in the coming days.
In the meantime, if you want to get a jump on the Question of the Month, start thinking about the unique uses of Mind Maps that you’ve come up with or seen…
Discussion & Comments
Have Questions? Disagree with something? Want to carry on the discussion?
Leave your thoughts and comments below and let’s carry on the conversation.
… seems to be the verdict.
Last month we asked the community “PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused?“. We got a great set of responses and several people even took the time to craft some great posts on the topic for their own blogs.
Blog Posts:
For Successful PowerPoint Presentations, Look to Cartoonists - Austin Kleon
Bad PowerPoint, Bad! Bad! - Dick Carlson
On PowerPoint - Neil Cohn
Why PowerPoint Rules the Business World - Dave Gray
PowerPoint - Good or Bad? - Dan Rose
Highlights from our comments:
As a long time client of mine says, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”
It takes wisdom and discernment to choose the right tool used in the right way to achieve a specific purpose. Don’t blame the tool, but don’t make it the only tool in your toolbox.
It’s funny that people don’t blame word for crappy documents or Corel Draw for clipart… wait they don’t right?
I used to work at a design firm 10 years ago that once they found out they could make PDFs go full screen made all their presentations in Quark Express. It didn’t help them make better presenattions.
Content is always the king…
…whatever the tool.
Tools don’t maketh an interesting presentation…
- Jaideep Jagasia
One of the reasons PowerPoint became successful is its ease of use. It automatically creates a new presentation when you open the program. You click on the New Slide button and start typing your title and bullet points. With little effort (well, for some people even this is probably a lot of effort, but…), you’ve created a “presentation.” If the default setting were a blank slide, people would be forced to think (at least a little) about what they’re doing before subjecting the world to ‘death by paragraphs masquerading as bullet points.’ Now that the toothpaste is out of the tube, though, I don’t think there’s any way to go back.
- Robert Newcombe
Visit the original post to read all the comments.
So Who Won?
We were thrilled with the response to this month’s question and after a lot of deliberation we decided on Austin Kleon’s post “For Successful PowerPoint Presentations, Look to Cartoonists” as the winner for this go around. He not only had an interesting take on the topic but his post actually spun off a good amount of discussion on his own blog and beyond.
Congratulations Austin!
What’s Next?
Next month we’re going to take a look at Mind Mapping. We’re still working on details but we should have some exciting webinar and podcast announcements in the coming weeks.
One interesting phenomenon with Mind Mapping is all the different uses people have come up with for the technique - from document outlines to personal planners & contact management solutions people seem to be able to bend Mind Mapping to do their bidding in almost any context.
As part of this month’s topic we’ll be looking to the community again for your thoughts and comments on Mind Mapping - this time we’ll be looking for your examples or discoveries of the most unique uses of Mind Mapping.
We’ll have more details in the coming days on how to respond, what prizes are up for grabs and who to expect on our podcasts and webinars in the coming weeks.
We’re happy to announce the second VizThink Austin meeting! This session will explore a technique on spontaneous group learning and generate ideas around how to apply this learning in your lives the next day. And yes, the learning is centered on the application of visual thinking principles.
The event is capped at 45, so register as soon as you can through the wiki link below - and let us know if you have any trouble.
http://wiki.vizthink.com/VizThinkAustin-2008-06-19
Location:
Ballet Austin
Thornton Community Board Room (2nd Floor)
501 W. 3rd Street
Austin, TX 78701
Time: 6 - 8 pm
UPDATE: The webinar was a fantastic success and has been published for viewing on our blog here.
Our webinar with presentation guru Nancy Duarte is one week from today on Tuesday, June 17th. You may know Nancy from her work on the presentation for Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. This webinar is FREE, but does require registration. Over 175 people have already registered for this exciting session!
Here are the details:
Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Time: 8am Pacific/11am Eastern/4pm British Summer Time/5pm Central European Summer Time
Length: 1 Hour
Cost: FREE
Technology Requirements: You will need both an Internet and Phone connection, detailed instructions will be provided in a confirmation e-mail.
Recording: This session will be recorded and posted for free to our blog (http://www.vizthink.com/blog) within two days after the webinar.
Register Now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/874814902
Also, don’t forget to comment on our related post…PowerPoint: A Powerful Tool Poorly Used or a Poor Tool Overused. The prize for the best response will be given out during the webinar. Details on how to respond can be found on that blog post.
You may have already noticed that our website (http://www.vizthink.com) has been redesigned. Along with a pretty significant redesign, there is some new content. Over the next 3 weeks, there will be quite a bit more new content as well including webinars, podcasts, events, and articles.
While the new design and content are pretty exciting, the most exciting part is what comes next…the visual thinking social network. Some of the features include an event calendar, groups, profiles, and of course networking with your visual thinking colleagues. This redesign was the next step in preparing for the social network which will be launched in the next 3 weeks. Other near future features of the network include job postings, individual blogs, image sharing, video sharing, and even a store!
Karl Gude is back in a new, 2-minute video answering the question:
His response?
Take a look at his video to get more details:
What I find interesting is that his five things line up very nicely with the work of Dan Roam, Dave Gray, and Yuri Engelhardt. Let’s look at them with slightly different words:
…which are 5 of Dan Roam’s “6 Ways of Seeing”. He, of course, adds Why as an additional question. Dave & Yuri each have similar frameworks. What’s even more interesting is that these are the same “classic” questions journalists have been asking for years. So, what was Karl’s advice to the journalists looking to tell stories visually? You can visualize a story using the exact same questions you want to answer in a text-based story. It’s the same advice you can use to tell any story visually, not just a newspaper article.
Last week, I was interviewed for a podcast by Aaron Munter and Christine Martell from ASTD’s Cascadia chapter. For those who aren’t familiar, ASTD (or the American Society for Training and Development) is a global organization for training and learning. They have many regional chapters and this one happens to be the Northwestern United States. You may remember Christine as one of our facilitators from VizThink ‘08.
The focus of the podcast is the visual thinking community and VizThink’s efforts to bring it together. The podcast is divided up into 5 segments. The interview appears in segments 2 (8 minutes) & 4 (6 minutes). Barrie Levinson from Xplane, one of VizThink’s sponsors, is also interviewed in segment 3 of this podcast.
You can listen in on the ASTD Cascadia blog or you can check it out here:
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You may also download the audio here…
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| ASTD Podcast Central |
UPDATE: The webinar was a fantastic success and has been published for viewing on our blog here.
Mark your calendars to join us on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 for another VizThink webinar. Join Nancy Duarte, presentation guru and designer of the presentation for Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, as we discuss keys to creating powerful presentations. Here are just a few of the things we’ll discuss:
Here are the details:
Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Time: 8am Pacific/11am Eastern/4pm British Summer Time/5pm Central European Summer Time
Length: 1 Hour
Cost: FREE
Technology Requirements: You will need both an Internet and Phone connection, detailed instructions will be provided in a confirmation e-mail.
Recording: This session will be recorded and posted for free to our blog (http://www.vizthink.com/blog) within two days after the webinar.
Register Now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/874814902
Also, don’t forget to comment on our related post…PowerPoint: A Powerful Tool Poorly Used or a Poor Tool Overused. The prize for the best response will be given out during the webinar. Details on how to respond can be found on that blog post.
Planning for VizThink Europe ‘08 is well underway. The event will be held October 12 - 14 at the Crowne Plaza in Berlin, Germany. For future events, we’ve decided to open up the Call for Facilitators to the community. This is your chance to be one of the facilitators at an upcoming VizThink conference. Are you a visual thinker? Do you have experiences and expertise you’d like to share? Can you teach others new techniques and ideas? Then being a VizThink facilitator is for you! Best of all, it includes a free pass to that entire event!
The Call for Sessions for VizThink Europe ‘08 will be open until June 29, 2008. You are encouraged to enter up to 3 ideas. Each submission will be evaluated by a panel of experts. If you are selected, you’ll be notified via e-mail by mid-July.
We look forward to your ideas and seeing you in Berlin!
A few months ago, we wrote a post with a few videos from Karl Gude on a few key drawing skills. The one on drawing in perspective was particularly interesting. While Karl later pointed out that it had a few errors (like the telephone polls not being in perspective), but in any case many people found the introduction of perspective very helpful.
While I was in Germany last week planning for VizThink Europe ‘08 (October 12 -14), I transferred through the Frankfurt am Main train station. The lobby area had a very nice display of a variety of hands on scientific expiraments. One that caught my eye was this one about perspective. It’s a very simple example demonstrating the concept of a vanishing point. When viewed from the side, the train tracks look parallel:
The closer you move toward center:
The more the parallel lines appear to merge at the vanishing point in the distance:
…a beautifully simple, visual example. For tips on how to draw in perspective, check out Karl’s video at our earlier blog post.
VizThink Europe ‘08 is coming up quick. Five months from today we will be in the middle of our first day at VizThink in Berlin. I (Tom) leave this afternoon for Berlin to work on the many details that it takes to pull an event like this off. When I return, we’ll be launching the call for sessions, so be sure to check back for more details on how to become one of our facilitators for this exciting, inaugural European event.
In the meantime, if you happen to be in Berlin over the next 6 days, drop me a note at info AT vizthink DOT com. We’ll get together and talk about all things visual and Berlin over a drink.
I hope to see you in Berlin soon!
Ah, PowerPoint – love it or hate it, PowerPoint, and apps like it, are here to stay.
We’ve all seen brilliant presentations but more often than not we’re recoiling as the first slide pops up on screen… that moment when you realize you’re in for a long trudge through bullet point hell. You know the slides - a dozen (or two) bullet points, a garish assortment of fonts (sized either far too big or much too small) with some cheesy clip-art inserted for good measure.
Is PowerPoint just inherently flawed? Does it make it too easy to be bad? How do those moments of brilliance emerge from the same tool that generates countless slides of unwatchable content every day?
We’d love to hear your thoughts on PowerPoint - more specifically we’d be interested in hearing your answer to the following question:
PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused?
No need to write an essay, 300 words or less is great. Imagery is encouraged – you could even consider making a short Powerpoint presentation and putting it up on something like SlideShare. Add your response to the comments below, or if you have your own blog, add your response there and place a permalink to your post in the comments below.
At the end of the month we’ll be continuing our VizThink webinar series with a conversation about PowerPoint (& electronic presentations in general) featuring presentation design experts. Your responses will be a key part of the discussion during the webinar.
To thank everyone for their thoughts and posts we’re offering up a copy of Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points
To be eligible posts must be up by midnight May 25th June 12th, 2008 and tagged “VizThinkPPT”. We’ll be sure to review every post that we see (through trackbacks, comments and a Google Blog search monitor). The winner will be announced during the webinar later this month (will be announced via the blog)
Thanks in advance, we look forward to reading all your thoughts and insights!
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Today is Ryan Coleman’s first day at VizThink. We thought a great way to start off his first day would be with a podcast to let the visual thinking community know a little bit about him and the plans for his new role as our Chief Community Evangelist. It’s a fancy title that means he’s going to work for YOU. During the podcast you’ll hear Ryan answer: |
How did he arrive at VizThink?
What is a Chief Community Evangelist?
What’s his vision for the community?
What are the first things he’s going to tackle?
What is he looking forward to most?
Check out the 12 minute 10 second podcast here:
Hint: Use the Full Screen Button to see this video in greater detail.
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You may also download the audio here… |
On behalf of the visual thinking community and the team at VizThink, welcome Ryan! We’re looking forward to lots of great things for the visual thinking community.
Today is the launch of Luke Wroblewski’s new book, Web Form Design. For a review of the book, check out our recent blog post. During the podcast, Luke answers a variety of questions such as:
Why web form design is important
If form design is everywhere and easy, why are there so many bad forms?
What are some of the common mistakes web form designers make?
What are the Top 3 tips for improving web forms?
Why do good designers create bad forms?
What is the disappearing form?
How does web form design relate to visual thinking?
Check out the podcast with Luke here:
Hint: Use the Full Screen Button to see this video in greater detail.
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You may also download the audio here… |
Two versions of the book, print & digital ($36) and digital only ($19), go on sale this Thursday. Members of the visual thinking community are eligible for a 10% discount using the code FOVIZTHINK at the Rosenfeld Media website:
http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/webforms/
Buy one for yourself and be sure to buy one for your web designer too!
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There are only 3 days left until the New York Visual Thinking Workshop. There are still a few seats available and there’s still time to register. Come join Karl Gude & Dave Gray for a fun, engaging day as we learn how visual thinking can be used to explore complex information and present it more effectively. This workshop combines high-level design principles with practical applications through a series of hands-on exercises, designed to develop analytical, design and visual thinking abilities. Working individually and in small teams, you will learn and practice visualization techniques that have been successfully used to improve innovation and accelerate change at some of the world’s leading companies. |
After completing this workshop you will have a toolkit for thinking and presentation effectiveness — your presentations of complex information and strategies will never be the same.
Date: May 2, 2008
Time: 8am-5pm
Location: Crowne Plaza - White Plains, New York
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It’s time for another book review. Releasing later this week is Luke Wroblewski’s latest book, Web Form Design. Not surprisingly, the book is about how to design good forms for websites. Luke is an author, the Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc, and was a facilitatorat our recent VizThink event in San Francisco. |  |
I wish I could say that a book like this wasn’t necessary because every website used good design principles when creating their sites, but, having filled out too many web forms, the concepts are something that anyone gathering information from website visitors should read and implement. While building on earlier efforts by the likes of Jakob Nielsen, Alan Cooper, and Don Norman, Luke takes a different approach in some ways more broad talking about overall design principles and in some ways more narrow focusing only on forms. While books of this sort could easily devolve into programming lessons, Luke keeps his focus on his mission of good design.
At first, you may wonder why a web form design book fits in the visual thinker’s library. The User Experience/Interface Design/Usability community has much in common with visual thinking, and are, in fact, a vital part of the community. Just like other groups, they work with complex information and try to present it in such a way that reduces the time needed to process the information and increases comprehension.
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In the first two chapters of the book, Luke focuses on why form design matters and the overall organization of forms. He also presents the case for form design as a conversation between the company and the customer including the benefits and disadvantages of using a conversational tone. In the next 6 chapters, he dives into the details of particular form elements with advice on how and when to use them. Throughout these chapters, Luke focuses on the impact of element selection on flow. Each of the ideas are supported with usability testing including some very interesting eye tracking technologies used by Etreand Matteo Penzo. He does a particularly nice job of talking about the use of passwords and password fields in a registration form, but then I think he brushes over the creation of a “password so secure they can’t remember it”. Maybe it’s one of my pet peeves, but if the website has thought enough to design a form with the instructions to create a “secure” password that has “one uppercase letter, two symbols, and three numerals”, they should also be kind enough to put those same instructions on the login screen. |
The book really gets interesting in the final 6 chapters where he covers the more complex issues of interactivity, help, validation, and even a nice section on what’s next with forms. Advice on smart defaults (using the responses from the majority of your audience as a default), personal defaults (using the previous responses from a person to inform defaults), inline validation (checking responses as they are typed), and maybe most interestingly his concept of gradual engagement. Why have people fill out forms at all? In fact, forms deter the involvement of many people. One of his examples is a travel documentation service called TripIt. Rather than asking the visitor to provide lots of information about themselves up front, the service gets the person going right away and then gathers pieces of the information over time as they are needed. Form design by eliminating forms, now that’s innovation!
Overall, the book is a well-written, quick read and essential for those who are just getting started with form design. For those in the user experience community, the book has a few interesting new takes, but may be a bit basic. However, if that were really true, we wouldn’t have so many bad form designs.
Two versions of the book, print & digital ($36) and digital only ($19), go on sale this Thursday. Members of the visual thinking community are eligible for a 10% discount using the code FOVIZTHINK at the Rosenfeld Media website:
http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/webforms/
Check back here later this week for a podcast with Luke!
In the visual thinking community, we frequently use the term visual language. Some would say that it gets used pretty loosely. So, today we began that discussion with 3 experts in our field in order to begin to understand what visual language really means. Neil Cohn, Yuri Engelhardt, and Dave Gray joined us to discuss topics like:
What is a visual language?
Does a visual language require a grammar?
What components make up a visual grammar?
Are certain forms of visualization a language and others not?
Not surprisingly, we come up with as many questions as we do answers. Our experts find some areas of agreement and plenty of areas ripe for further podcasts and live debates. For your convenience, we’re trying out a new format that divides the podcast into 11 digestible segments. Just click on the clip your interested in to skip around.
Hint: Use the Full Screen Button to see this video in greater detail.
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You may also download the audio here… |
It’s so exciting to see what’s going on in the community. Just a couple days ago, over 35 people gathered from all over London for the first meeting of visual thinkers there. They had quite the mix of people from graphic designers to internal communications to musical theatre producers who all came together to talk about visualization. The topic this time was “Why Visual Communications?” They even got some great photos from the event. The event was such a success, they’ve already planned their next one for July 10th. Many thanks to Tom & Ricky for getting this kicked off!
There’s even more exciting news from the community front. VizThink Austin is just 10 days away from their first event which is being held on April 30th. To sign up, just add your name to the wiki. Charlene, Sunni, and Marilyn have done a great job getting this going. So, all of you from the Austin area be sure to sign up and stop by!
Remember, these local communities are always free. Attend, present, participate, learn, network, and have a little fun.
With London, Toronto and Austin already established, is your city next? If you would like to start a VizThink community started in your area, please let us know at info (at) vizthink (dot) com.
