There is an emerging discipline across the western
world, where artists, or people with drawing skills support
"In-Process" thinking.
While there are NO definitive examples of what a visual practitioner is or isn't, there are a number of individuals applying visual tools across a range of activities and from a number of different viewpoints who have begun to adopt the "visual practitioner" description for what they do. The results is that teams of designers, groups of business leaders, whole organizations and to a certain extent, even movements use the stuff produced by thes "visualizer's" to think about their choices, plans, systems and so on in a different light.
My Definition: The Visual Practitioner is someone who uses art, but is also part facilitator, part system analyst or technical modeler, part strategist and visionary, part psychologist and communicator.
My work has found a home in the Boeing Company, where I believe I've been given something of an edge-in some ways over others who do this "visual practitioner" work, since they typically operate in corporate board rooms. I'm deeply embedded in the technical realm, thus have a "technical" or "complex system" orientation.
Rather than merely illustrate (or decorate) documents or presentations, this "in-process" persepective requires engineers, designers and their management to "see-together" not only what they say, but what they believe. It add's and entirely different dimension to the "thinking" being done to develop the material at hand.
The material that comes out of this - (pictures, cartoons, maps and models) help neutralize the confusion created by "technical dialects" and they facilitate a kind of "emergent dialogue" across cultural/organizational boundaries.
Using drawings to facilitate "thinking different" shows people what it is they are saying, and helps them "put things together" to understand them. This is "synthesis" - which in my view is the "other" or "complimentary" thinking process (opposite of "analysis) by which any group/team/organization gains a more coherent and deeper understanding of the issues at hand. Getting understanding at a deeper than surface level helps people achieve consensus and make the "creative leaps" needed into "new" or better space (system, process, technique)
The outcome has often been highly effective in helping breakthrough ideas surface and be embraced, across large organizations and design teams. People "see" meaning even when they don't know how to talk about it and by "seeing" together... they can find commonalities, "holes", opportunities that are often buried in the details.
Analysis is great for detail... Synthesis (what this draw "thing" promotes) helps people "see" the whole....
Applying the
opposite..."Taking things apart" is accomplished by emphasizing FACTS and DATA.
"Putting together" is accomplished by using a metaphor an analogy. "This thing" I don't understand, is like "this other thing" I DO understand-in the following ways...
I always say "God gave us two sides of a brain for a reason". In other words, we need both analysis and synthesis working together to make the most of our problem solving skills.
The subject of this website is to show how the use of a metaphor or analogy to depict a business situations and present themin the context of cross functional team dialogue, elicits facts and data previously un-exposed to the light of day. This approach makes it possible to go faster and do more productive "stuff", that we've all done previously.
I n my ase, I use Cartoon art to do this. Toons have historically been a vehicle used to confront cultural reality. Some of us have begun to understand what the famous cartoonist Walt Kelly (creator of the cartoons strip, Pogo) meant when he wrote:
"we has met the enemy, and he is us".
Cartoonists
(aside from rumors to the contrary) are very serious people (at
least THIS cartoonist is). Cartoons have ALWAYS been for adults.
Using cartoon art to help people SEE what they are saying, doing
and living, in context has a powerful effect.
The concept of "modern" was built upon the notion that everything HAS to make sense! Oh really? Is "rational thought"really giving us what we want or need? Does our ability to analyze really solve the problems we have?
I work with technical people of all stripes. From engineers to analyst, programmers to accountants. From the scientists to MBA weeny... They all have the same problem. They've all broken their problems down in to smaller and smaller pieces (this is the essence of "analysis"), in their vain attempts to understand what is going on, and are now suffering sensory and data overload as they struggle "nose deep" in loose facts and data!
Regardless of Methodology, Ontlogy, and Archeology used, the problems we deal with get BIGGER and more complex instead of being solved. Analysis by itself and New technology isn't cutting it!
So if taking things apart (analysis) gives understanding (to a certain point), what about putting Things Together (synthesis), in order to understand them?
The notion of "wholistic" or "systems" thinking has been around for 20+ years. While it has its own record of success, and list of popular adherents, it by itself has NOT brought about the revolution that it's proponents would have liked to see.
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