Crash Course in Visual Thinking

Based on my post - VizThink and Visual Thinking - I've received quite a bit of input. If you've not really thought about the connections between visual representations and eLearning, it's likely worth going to the post and reading the comments.

If you've ever doubted the value of blogging, this to me has been an exceptional example of the value. I've had a few of the great minds in visual thinking helping me to understand:

a. how visual thinking relates to eLearning, and
b. how visual thinking can be learned.

I'm looking forward to a series of posts that Christine Martell is doing around learning to think visually. And Tom Crawford just did a post that points to some resources for getting started in visual thinking. Dave Gray just sent me a link to his Squidoo Lens. It has some great resources. Although he scares me a bit when he tells me:

Most of what I do comes down to pushing people off the cliff and making them dive in.

Very visual description yes. But with a small fear of heights ... :)

This is hopefully turning into a great introduction to how visual thinking can be learned.

Interestingly, Christine, Tom and Dave Gray from Xplane all point to Bob Horn's book as a great example. I'm a bit worried if that's the example. I'm even more worried when I went to Bob's web site. Dave Gray has always done incredible graphics that really help me to quickly understand a topic. Bob's web site violates a lot of what I would consider to be good design. Please, tell me that I won't think that's good design by the end of this crash course? I can't imagine that anyone thinks that good design?

VizThink and Visual Thinking and Learning - Still Not Sure

Tom Crawford is a person I consider to be a friend, colleague and really good person. He has a wonderful background including being director of eLearning at Root Learning and working for Masie organizing events. He is now CEO of Vizthink - and is organizing and running VizThink '08. I think he's done a wonderful job pulling together what looks to be a very interesting conference.

All that said - I'm still not sure I really get the connection between visual thinking and eLearning. I asked Tom to help fill me in and so we've had a little dialog on it. I thought it would be worth sharing a bit of our conversation and inviting others to join in.

Tom suggests...

When creating an e-learning module, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of pages of material required to document what is to be created. In some organizations, they have replaced the documentation with storyboards which are certainly a step in the right direction, visually. However, even storyboards can be complex to create, hard to update, and even harder to develop from. Visual thinking offers opportunities to streamline that development process especially during the review and approval stages. Very rarely will someone read pages of text, where a visual that communicates the same message provides a quick way for people to review and then respond. The process also benefits from the creation of personas, visual stories about the learner, which help keep the learner the focus of the design.

I agree with Tom about using multiple Persona (Personas? Personi?) to help focus the design effort, but that's design 101, not really visual thinking. I definitely agree with creating representations of what the screens will be and/or storyboards. Again, design 101. So, what the heck is he talking about with this? Isn't this standard design stuff?

Tom goes on ...

Another portion of visual thinking is usability, information design, and interactivity. How often have you looked at an e-Learning module and not know what to do? Colors are drawing your eyes in many directions, text fills the screen and is hard to use, buttons work sometimes and not others with no indication of why, the interactivity does reinforce the message, the visual (often clipart or a stock photo) are irrelevant and distracting…these are all signs that more attention needed to be paid to the visual (and visual thinking) aspects of the module. The use of space, color, images, text, and interactivity are all significant portions of the visual thinking space, and if not done well they can inhibit and even prevent learning from occurring.

Uh, Tom, this is exactly user interface design. There's got to be more, right? Or am I missing something in what he's talking about. I'm not saying good user experience design is not important - it is hugely important, especially for a lot of the projects that I work on. But, I have many sources for help with user experience - I'm not sure I get how that could be the focus of VizThink.

Finally, he gets to what I expected him to discuss...

Finally, and maybe most importantly, visualization can enhance almost every learning opportunity. When they are well designed, visuals communicate more information, more quickly, with more retention and longer recall. The application of visual thinking is across all art styles from photos and video to sketching and illustration to virtual worlds and even product design. New tools allow annotation, collaboration, and co-creation visually. Rather than talking about doing something, people use the creative process to solve problems, generate ideas, and streamline processes.

To me, when you talk visual thinking, I normally think of the wonderful diagrams that people can create from your concepts (see Marilyn Martin's picture of my eLearning 2.0 concepts).

There certainly is big value from being able to take concepts and turn them into diagrams, pictures, visualizations. Kathy Sierra is a master of that. I've always felt that there was a certain skill required to do that where you can crystalize the important issues, simplify, picture them and then render. I'm sure that Tom's conference will talk a lot about this.

And, certainly if you are able to do that, you can create more powerful learning tools. Just like you can create more powerful marketing tools, communication tools, etc.

So, again, I highly respect Tom and the conference. And maybe it's as simple as the fact that a lot of what we do in training, learning, education is try to crystalize the important points, and turn it into an engaging, meaningful learning experience. So, maybe it's a parallel and very useful skill. But I have this sense that Tom thinks there's more to it.

And, I just am still not sure I get what he's seeing? What am I missing here?

Communities / Social Networking and LMS Merger

Update 12/7/07 - Great comments from David Wilkins (see below) including:

user-generated content is going to change eLearning; anyone who thinks otherwise or who is not yet planning for the shift is going to be left wondering what the heck happened in just a few years.

I've not seen a lot about Mzinga in the eLearning world, but it represents something pretty interesting. Mzinga is a merger of KnowledgePlanet (an LMS provider and also the maker of the eLearning simulation tool - Firefly) and Shared Insights - a community / business social networking software company.

From what I can gather from the press releases and based on who's in charge of the combined company, it appears that KnowledgePlanet is somewhat the loser. The top execs at Mzinga are not the top execs from KnowledgePlanet. It makes me wonder what this says about the LMS and tools market. We are beginning to see dominance by a few bigger vendors and if you can't be one of them, then it's tough sledding.

The other interesting thing here is that it seems like LMS vendors really are moving away from being LMS vendors. Previously, I talked about how they are now referring to themselves in terms of talent management and workforce productivity. There have also been moves to become focused on a niche such as an industry or function or certification.

This merger points to another direction - combination of LMS capability + community / social networking. I'm not sure I quite get what that means yet. I wonder if mzinga does? The description of their offerings seem still mostly separate (communities software and the KP learning platform). Also, if you go to the solutions page, it doesn't mention Firefly. And even the name of the page - Community Solutions - suggests that the LMS isn't all that important.

Luckily David Wilkins - who I've known for quite a few years - has helped me try to understand. It sounds a lot like an LMS with integrated communities. But like Q2Learning, they aim to provide visibility into community activities. This is something that I think makes sense, especially when trying to get communities going. David helps to paint a bit of a picture:

...think certification training with links to discussion forums or a Wiki or relevant files in a shared file repository...

He also pointed me to a Gartner quote:

Enterprise social software will be the biggest new workplace technology success story of this decade.

This certainly helps us understand why you might want to have someone like KP's sales and marketing to help you sell community software into the enterprise.

italki - Social Network for Language Learning

italki is an interesting website in the language learning space - which seems to be very busy these days. They provide the ability to connect with other learners who are trying to learn a language. People find each other using the site and then connect via chat, IM, voice/Skype, etc.

There are other resources, but the use of a social network to find people who can help each other learn the language is a great idea.

Not sure if it can work in practice given the many other barriers that will come up.

I'd be curious what people think about this as a learning mechanism.

Too many updates

I use FeedBlitz to provide email subscriptions to my blog. A surprising number of people actually use this option - roughly 150 of 3,000 subscriptions. I get a couple sign-ups for email every week and about every other week someone unsubscribes. Feedblitz allows the user to specify a reason. Most often it's either "no longer relevant" or "subscribed in another way."

Today I got my first cancellation with the reason "Too many updates" ...

It actually, made me smile.

I've become part of the problem. :)

Aha Moments in 2007

The Big Question is back...

December Big Question - What did you learn about learning?

I'm going after this just a little bit different. I wanted to go back and figure out what things really struck me during 2007....

So I first went back to what I wrote about last year:

Some of the more specific memories from 2006:

• I started my blog in February 2006.


• I started using del.icio.us and Yahoo MyWeb to save bookmarks - locally saved favorites seem rather limited now.


• I had a real "aha experience" after using add-ins to provide features inside my blog. Boy were they easy to use. It's all pure service. And this experience kept coming all during the year with Wikis, and more (Incredibly Cool! Vision of Future of Application and eLearning Development)


• I found myself no longer recommending the use of RoboInfo or other similar programs for reference materials. Wikis are way better even if the end-users don't edit.


• I had a very interesting disagreement with a client about the technical direction for their solution - they wanted local editing via a Word add-in locally installed - I advocated providing a pure web delivered solution. I lost the argument. In the long run, they'll lose. No one should advocate putting stuff on a desktop anymore without a dang good reason.


• I found myself using Wikipedia early in research tasks on all sorts of topics.

But by far the most vivid memory of 2006 comes from a comment made during a panel that I was moderating on eLearning 2.0. We had discussed Wikis, Blogs and were embarking on Second Life. Someone from the audience in all sincerity said:

“This stuff is freaking me out.”

She is right on the money. It is freaking us out. We know something pretty special is happening right now.

If you are a glutton for more of this, take a look at:

• Does eLearning 2.0 Make a Difference?


• Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups

Wow, what a great list from 2006, I'm glad I have that saved somewhere. ;)

So how about in here's a random list of things from 2007:

• My 10 year old son edited Wikipedia - A Fourth Grader Wikipedia Update and added value.
  
  
• Some people are really not getting the impact of different tools. Getting Value from LinkedIn, Thomas Davenport and Blogging - He is Wrong!, Spending or Wasting Time on Web 2.0 Tools?,
  

• But the good news is that it appears that more and more people are getting it (More eLearning Bloggers, Facebook Fridays and I'm definitely Pushing Harder Now and we need to adopt the attitude - eLearning 2.0 - Just Go Do It.
  
  
• We are going to be going through Disruptive Changes in Learning. and unless you innovate (Innovators' Dilemma in Learning/eLearning) you are going to fall prey to alternatives be it do-it-yourself learning or start-ups.
  
  
• A purely virtual conference (Free Online Conference - Corporate Learning: Trends) with amateur organizers, gorilla marketing through social networks, and a wiki for it's main page worked out pretty well. And I'm sure it could be better.
  
  
• Social networks through my blog or LinkedIn are great ways to get specific help for yourself and for others... Making Learning with an LMS Fun? Help Needed!, Help - Pace in Industry, LMS Selection Presentation, Writing, Learning, Knowing - Help Needed.
  
  
• Courseware is being pushed towards Good Enough because clients value speed more than quality in many cases.
  
  
• It's hard to find out how people are using Web 2.0 tools inside organizations.
  
  
• Adoption is going to be personal/consumer first - organizational adoption is going to lag: Web 2.0 - Consumer vs. Enterprise Use. Companies are going to have a big problem trying to handle this: More Discussion on Personal Work Learning Environments.
  
  
• Signs of the times: End of an Era - Authorware Dies, InfoWorld Folds Print Magazine
  
  
• When you name your kids, consider personal search - Personal Search - and Naming Your Kids.
  
  
• The way people find you can be amusing: Top Ten Subliminal Searches.
  
  
• I'm not very good with Back Channel Use - and I should learn how to do it better.

But probably the biggest sign of the times for me is that I personally find myself working on helping lots of organizations figure out how social media, new technologies, etc. affect them and their users.

Cisco - Enterprise 2.0

I don't know how I missed this, but thanks to Bill Ives for covering it on the FastForward blog -More Web 2.0 Stories, Part One: Cisco Goes All Out on Enterprise 2.0 points us to:

Mike Gotta - Cisco: Learning Internally Before Delivering Externally and Money's Cisco's display of strength

[Martin] De Beer a year ago set up an internal wiki called I-Zone that has so far generated 400 business ideas. "Better still," he says, "another 10,000 people have added to those ideas." His team measures which notions draw the most activity and cherry-picks a handful to unveil at Cisco's quarterly leadership-development program. Normally at such gatherings, promising up-and-comers from across a company hear lectures, bond, and ponder case studies. But De Beer decided to use these sessions to take the most promising I-Zone ideas and pound them into real-world business plans. Three of the nine notions so tested are now in active development.

This whole process has been an eye opener even for Chambers. He used to tell his staff, "I do strategy; you do execution." "He was amazed," says Ron Ricci, a former consultant who since 2000 has served as Cisco's internal culture keeper. "He said, 'We just did three billion-dollar market opportunities without my knowing about it.'"

This sounds a bit like IBM's innovation jams which have been very successful in generating ideas and discussion across the organization.

In September [2007] it launched a website that is a microcosm of everything evoked by the phrase "Web 2.0." There's a Ciscopedia, where people can build an evolving body of lore about anything fellow Ciscans might want to know.

This sounds similar to what Intel did with Intelpedia - which has been really great at providing support across a wide cross section of activities at Intel. Several training initiatives have made good use of content being created on Intelpedia.

There are text blogs and video blogs, discussion groups, and "problems and solutions links." There's an internal version of MySpace, which provides not only title and contact info but also personal profiles, job histories, interests, and videos. Soon it will show whether a person is reachable by, say, office phone, cell, IM, or telepresence, and offer a one-click connection.

Fantastic. Great way to find expertise and resources. Capture best practices. And support personal learning and networking.

And there's more. "We're going to use social bookmarking to allow us to take the pulse of the organization," says Jim Grubb, who built the website (and whose day job is putting together John Chambers' demos). They'll do that by aggregating the tags employees create into "tag clouds" when they click on sites. Tracking these will allow a Cisco honcho to get a snapshot of the current hot-button issues for marketing or finance. If an employee is tagged as the go-to person for virtualization, say, he could earn a bonus for this previously unacknowledged expertise. That's down the road. Asked for a here-and-now example, Cisco marketing head Sue Bostrom laughs (proudly) and recounts the six-month online campaign to develop and select a five-note "Cisco sound" for TV and Internet ads. "Ten thousand employees voted," she says, "and 1,200 partners also participated."

Great description of what organizations can do.