The back of the napkin is really a good book for visualizing research. It emphasizes that every person is able to grab a pen and draw to solve different kinds of problems. The lecture and huge amount of visual exercises we have today is a start for me to rethink visualizing research. For academic purposes visualization is not for fun and less for showing things, it’s more important to use simple, clear and direct sketches to communicate and develop ideas. And quote from The back of the napkin “The real good of visual thinking is to make the complex understandable by making it visible.” Many cases in this book prove that how strategic and analytical simple sketches could be, just like the picture followed:
The content in the book and also the exercises we have today remind me that actually for red pen people (who refuse to consider themselves as visual people) it’s easier to transform to black pen people (who are happier to draw things) if they find and follow the right visual steps and patterns, however, for black pen people (I’m one of them) it may be harder to establish good visual thinking ways and generate great visual works for research because they may haven’t got the analytical way of solving problems in their minds. Therefore, like what we did today as we were trying to visualize something, deeper thinking about the information you want to convey and develop your mind structure firstly is very important.
More reflection of The back of the napkin is here http://yzoedesign.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/the-back-of-the-napkin/
Visualising the Voice of WithScotland 