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Visual ThinkingBoost participation and idea generation by using visual methods to enhance the brainstorming process.Visual Thinking refers to any technique that allows you or your team to build, and build on, a visual concept of the ideas being generated and discussed. How to Think Visually1. Use the analogy of associations and connections between ideas. This is how your brain learns something new, stores it and retrieves it later. It has to have a connection to something else you know.Visual thinking example: A mind map is a great way to connect ideas on paper, board, or screen so you can see the ideas AND the connections. 2. Use color. Your thought processes and attention are invigorated by using multiple colors for your drawing. And I use the word drawing in a very loose way. Keywords and rough sketches, including stick figures are just fine. Thinking on paper or board should be free and easy. There are books about how to draw simple symbols such as Visual Thinking: Tools for Mapping Your Ideas  or Mapping Inner Space: Learning and Teaching Visual Mapping
3. Brainstorming by hand drawing. When you use markers and write fast and large on paper or a board, just letting it flow, ignoring any grammar or spelling interruptions, it helps show the big picture of the ideas and thoughts. The online programs are fantastic for sharing mind maps and other visual methods but they can be restricting during the free flow stage because you have to deal with the technology and where top put items and notes. The larger the space (paper or board) the more free you will feel vs the size of a computer screen. Then during the review and organize stage it is often helpful to put your results into a computer program meant to help you visualize. 4. Pictures, drawings, shapes, clip art, historic photos, pictures of famous people, all the images that you can think of that can stimulate thinking about your brainstorming subject. The pictures don't have to have anything to do with the the subject. They just have to evoke other images and ideas to keep the brainstorming going. Some of the
brainstorming tools
use pictures for this purpose. In all cases you ask the questions: 5. Word picturesTake the words that are part of your brainstorming subject and use the Visual Thesaurus to look at the words that come up. Click on one of the words that comes up and make it the center of a new search. Look at the big picture developing of the words that are connected. Click on the opposite word and explore it, too, with the Visual Thesaurus. Return from the Visual Thinking page to the Brainstorming-That-Works home page.
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