I return to paper and a pen. That usually lasts for a few months.

Then someone hands me a tricky problem to solve. Or I get excited about a new idea that requires me to think in a complex way.

Do you ever have these moments? When your mind mulls over and over one idea?

During those times, even if I start the thinking with a paper and pen, I often give the tablet a try.

Why Tablets Are Great For Complex Thinking

Don Norman, author of the Design of Everyday Things, uses the term ‘affordance’. An affordance refers to the properties of an object that make certain behaviours possible.

For example, a chair has an affordance that allows people to sit. The two loops of scissors have an affordance for fingers and a thumb so we can cut.

A tablet (via the combination of the device, a stylus and notetaking software) provide affordances for certain interactions that help with complex thinking.

4 Unique Interactions Not Possible With Pen & Paper

Consider this. On a tablet we can:

1. Move a drawing (eg. select and move a sketched object to change its order)
2. Scale a drawing (eg. make a single sketched object smaller or larger)
3. Zoom in/out (eg. we can zoom in to add further, finer detail to a sketched object)
4. Change art-board or paper (eg. if the size of digital paper we are sketching on is A4, we could enlarge the art-board to A3 or A2 , so more can be fit on the page)

This is exciting, not because of the technology itself, but because these interactions offer new possibilities to deepen our thinking compared with paper.

And any tool that helps our brains interact with and simplify complex information is worth knowing about.

Examples Of Activities Where This May Apply

Some activities suit this style of thinking better than others.

In my experience, any activity that requires most or all of the following is helped by a tablet:

• iterative thinking
• lots of information or data
• classification and re-classification of information
• relationships between objects and ideas
• a sense of sequence or flow
• sketchnoting and visual thinking

As examples, these activities benefit from thinking on a tablet:

• User Journeys: presenting many steps that a typical user takes in order to complete a task;
• Prioritizing, Categorizing & Coding: working with ideas or data that require coding, categorization and/or prioritization, as with this with a recent article on effective projects;
• Systems Maps: using a visual language to describe all the aspects and interactions of a complex system. Leyla Acaroglu teaches systems thinking and provides some useful tips on other tools to help with systems maps;
• Roadmaps: charting the course of delivery and execution plans, including detailed dependencies between tasks;
• Integrated Frameworks: bringing together diverse and seemingly separate themes and ideas into a coordinated framework (eg. Operating Models, Design Systems, Spotify’s Scaling Agile Framework)

Tablets do have downsides compared to paper. Most don’t give the sensation of friction when a pen moves across paper and the backlight of the screen can cause fatigue.

Overall, they present some unique possibilities that can enhance personal thinking and productivity.

What do you think? Consider sharing your thoughts by adding a comment below.

The video used in the header of this page can be viewed from the video page of this site.

The post How Tablets Can Accelerate Complex Thinking appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

I first started sketchnoting based on my annual experiment methodology of learning a new skill. Since then I’ve been continuously refining this craft.  It’s highly useful for working with digital teams to explore new opportunities.

Sketchnoting and visual thinking can use used for many purposes, from accelerating big thinking through to generating wireframes for prototypes, to creating strategy presentations. I’ve even used it as a method to interview mentors across industries.

In one of the sections of the guide we look at practical tools for skecthnoting.  It’s easy to build your own toolkit to carry with you on a daily basis.  Below is a photo of what I take with me. Everything (except the sketchbooks of course) fits in a neat case from Cordura.

Favorite tools are Mitisubishi Pencil Company Pens, TomBow ABT Dual Brush Pens, Rotring Pencils and Mnemosyne Notebooks.

If you have any questions about sketchnoting or your own experiences from sketchnoting, why not share your thoughts by adding a comment below.

The post How To Build Your Own Sketchnote Toolkit appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

If you’re new to visual thinking, you might like to take a look at my post on Rich Pictures or even browse #sketchnotes on Twitter for some great examples.

In the last 10 years Visual Thinking has become an important management skill. This has been supported by the convergence of tablet devices and new forms of writing (just take a look at the Adonit Dash or Apple’s Pencil), as well as new spaces in workplaces dedicated to wall-drawing and collaboration. With all these developments the current and next generation of managers will take to drawing as a leadership skill.

In this post we look at three tools tools that enhance the visual thinking and creative process. These tools aren’t designed to replace drawing, but rather enhance at.

#1. Evernote Capture

I use Evernote’s capture facility to take quick photos of anything I sketch on paper. The tool will capture sketches at any angle. It also has the very handy facility of cleaning up the photo or converting it to a document (which basically colour-corrects and cleans up the image). You can even use the tool to add annotations to your picture.

#2. Tawe

Sometimes I’ll sketch at a conference or presentation. Then afterwards, when I wish to share the sketch with others, I open the page of my note book and talk through the sketch. The Tawe app allows you to do this for a single person or a large audience. If you have a photo of a sketch, just load it into Tawe, and then select the points you wish to animate. This lets you rapidly create a presentation from a simple sketch. It’s like Prezi meets your sketch pad. Congratulations to the folks at Tawe for creating something so unique and highly useful.

#3. Vittle

If you like to sketch directly on your tablet, Vittle is worth a try. Vittle lets you capture and animate your sketch as you draw it. You can use the app’s zoom feature to focus on a specific item you’re drawing or zoom out for a view of your entire sketch. What’s more, you can add narration to your sketch by recording your voice as the sketch plays. This is a very useful teaching aid which allows us to use visual thinking to build out stories and learning materials.

I hope these tools will enhance your own visual thinking process. If you wish to share different tools you use with others you can leave a comment below.

The post 3 Tools To Take Visual Thinking To The Next Level appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

It’s true that PowerPoint has become so common place in today’s workplace, it’s a basic skill we all are required to learn.  For many, writing slides can feel like hard work. But it doesn’t have to be.

I view PowerPoint as a canvas to create good communications.  Whether using paper-and-pen or slides, I would use exactly the same process.

Try it yourself. Forget about the clipart images and fancy animations. Start instead with a blank A4 page, just turn it to landscape.

Everyone has their own process for creating compelling communications. In this post I share my process for going from an idea to polished materials suitable for everything from boardroom briefings to business plans.

1. Consider The Audience for Your Slides

The first thing I do is consider the audience. Is the audience made up of executives? Are they marketers or analysts? Different audiences like different styles of presentations. An Executive might like an Outcome listed at the top of a slide. An Analytical person might like to understand the Process that was used to create the materials. Considering our audience is important to how we layout content on a slide.

2. Think About the Subject

The slide subject gives us directions for the type of information to include on the slide. If the slide is about changing Mobile Technology, we could use images of Mobile Phones. If it’s about Industry Change, we could show how different companies have been affected by the change. If it’s about an area of Market Growth (or decline), this could be shown with a graph. If the subject for the slide is a Process that was used, a flow chart might be useful.  Thinking about the material can provide directions for what to include in our slide.

3. Consider Horizontal and Vertical Information

We read both horizontally (across the page) and vertically (down the page). As a result, I like to give slides both a horizontal and vertical flow. A horizontal flow is often useful for sequential understanding of information or categories. Vertical flow is good for adding layers or additional dimensions to the topics.

4. Start Simple by Sketching the Slide

Once I’ve thought about the first 3 points, I sketch the slide. I try not to add too much information to any one area. I seek a balance with the information that is laid out on the page. I edit. Then I edit again. Providing visual balance to what ends up on the page gives clarity to the message. Sometimes to get to this balance, just remove whatever adds confusion. Sketchnoting and visual thinking can definitely help the slide development process.

5. Evaluate the Message

From the sketch, we can consider the main message that is communicated. If there are too many messages that distract from the main message, we can think about simplifying the slide even more.  Often at this stage I write and re-write the slide’s headline. I test whether the information on the page supports the headline. If it doesn’t, I remove what isn’t needed.  This pattern of adjustment gets us closer to communicating a clear message.

6. Create a Draft of the Slide

Up until now I haven’t touched PowerPoint.  PowerPoint will not hide bad communication (though often it’s used to do so). That’s why it’s a good idea to avoid the animations, the clip art, and the layout until this point. Now is the only time – once I’ve crafted the message, balanced out the content, thought seriously about what I want to convey – that I start a PowerPoint draft.

7. Polish the Slide

This is where we can add refinements to the slide.  Here I swap images in and out. I play with fonts. I adjust the final elements to give the communication polish. Then voila, all done!

Here’s an example based on the sketch above.

I know this can seems like an involved process.  After practice it becomes second nature.  The whole thing , from start to end, can take as little as 30 minutes. And it can be worth it.

You can use one great slide over and over again to convey a strong message.  And there’s no real price we can put on having people and teams aligned toward a simple picture.

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During these transitions I’ve tried endlessly to find the perfect tablet sketching experience. Something that would be akin to drawing on paper, but with new interactions, like pinch and zoom, that are pure revelations when it comes to tablets. These are 3 drawing apps I’ve used and loved and recommend to you also. I like them so much that these days I find I spend far more time sketching on my tablet than I do on paper.

Notability

Notability is useful for all types of notes, not just sketching. It’s simple to categorise your notes, move pages about, and and even select and zoom/rotate objects. This is my ‘go to’ quick sketching app. If I’m in a meeting and want to note what’s being said in an illustration or mind map, I do it in notability. It’s my ‘main use’ app because it’s fast. It’s easy to sketch a quick object (whether a cloud or arrow). It’s even simpler to colour objects so that they have life on the page. Because objects are vectors, its a trivial task to select and resize an object also. And swiping up and down between pages lets me quickly find notes from months ago, just as easily as those from yesterday.

Paper

Paper is simply a beautiful app. For the artist in you that likes to sit in galleries and lose yourself in water colours, you’ll find this app as pleasant to spend time in as MOMA. A real weakness of Paper for some time was its poor zoom function. But this has since been solved in recent releases. Now you can pinch and zoom a magnifier to sketch in fine detail. I still have niggles with this app, but cannot fault it for sustaining a simple, elegant design, useful pen tools, and its sheer fun to use. What’s more, Paper includes a section that shows the art of other users, so you’re never far from inspiration.

Procreate

Procreate is a serious tool. It brings many elements previously reserved for Photoshop to the illustrator’s toolkit. You can use layers, opactity, colour swatches, about a million brushes and even create your own custom tools. This is the app to use if you wish to sketch contemplatively, with absolute realism, and high impact. It is not an app that you necessarily use for quick work-sketches. It is the app you use if you want to create artwork that you would put on the wall.

Of course there are many things your tablet cannot do. For example, it’s still difficult to get the feeling of your pen on paper, which provides a very tactile drawing experience. And it’s still difficult to get the pin point accuracy and graded shading of a good 2B pencil. But the gap has reduced considerably, at least enough for your tablet to now be a credible and frequently used option for day to day sketching needs. If you give it a go, I’d love to hear what you think.

The post 3 Drawing Apps that Might Make You Ditch Your Sketchpad appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

A good pitch can make the difference whether the idea gets marketing support, wins top talent, finds a sponsor, and even gets the $100 million of venture capital to go global.

In this post we look at proven pitch frameworks to get your idea the attention it deserves and some of the biggest example pitch decks of the last 10 years.

The Contents of The Ultimate Pitch Deck

So what content do you need in your pitch deck to wow your audience? Here’s a summary of the content and flow that some of the best pitch packs use.

• 1. Vision / Elevator Pitch
• 2. Team &/Or Board Members (Move to later if the team doesn’t have extensive credibility)
• 3. Market Opportunity
• 4. The Problem
• 5. The Solution
• 6. Product / Service
• 7. Traction*
• 8. Competition (and Your Competitive Advantages)
• 9. Business / Revenue Model
• 10. Financials* or Financial Projections
• 11. Your Financial Ask
• 12. Closing (Questions, Contacts)

* These are areas you’ll want to expand upon if your business idea has a history in the marketplace.

The 3 Big Questions to Grab Your Audience

If you don’t grab your audience in the first few minutes, you may lose them forever.

Among all the content in your pitch pack, in my opinion these 3 questions are the most important to nail upfront:

• Your Vision: people don’t just buy what you do today, they buy where you’re headed. They also buy the emotional story connected to your idea. This is why ‘vision’ is so important. It wraps up your compelling idea with a statement of inspiration and purpose to excite your audience.
• The Problem: for an idea to be worth anything, it has to solve something that challenges the world today. This is where your ‘problem’ statement comes in. As well as providing your audience with a concise summary of what your idea will solve, your problem statement also tells your audience that you have thought carefully about your purpose and target market.
• Your Solution: this tells your audience how you’ll solve the problem that you’ve identified. In your solution, touch on how your approach is different and unique from others out there in the market.

The Best Pitches – Large & Small

If you’ve ever wanted an example of a great pitch deck, look no further.  Even the biggest companies today had to pitch sometime (including facebook). This list shows a variety of golden pitch decks from the smallest to the largest businesses.

Cadee 

Buffer Pitch Deck

Airbnb

Mint.com Prelaunch Pitch Deck

Linked In Early Pitch Deck

Facebook’s Early Pitch Deck

Honorable Mentions

One Match Ventures pitch deck examples and templates is worth a look. As is Tim Young’s example deck for ACME, which I found gives excellent layouts for how to compress a good deal of information into a few slides.

Pitches keep innovation afloat in the world and, lets face it, take a good deal of courage.  I wish you all the best in connecting your ideas with what they need to shift to the next level.

***

Image Source: Maze Puzzle, by FutUndBeidl. https://www.flickr.com/photos/61423903@N06/7369580478

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In the pressures of today’s business, we may not always be able to realise these principles. But like the stone garden’s themselves, the principles are a reminder of what to aspire to, and even if these cannot be achieved every day, reflecting on these principles may make improve our daily practice.

1. Time

Stone gardens take time to create. It takes time to mold from a collection of pebbles a form that demonstrates artistry. This process cannot be rushed. It takes time. For our projects, how often do we ask for more time to produce an outcome of higher quality? Often we do not ask for more time for fear that our business may so ‘no’. However, we may be surprised how often the business is willing to trade-off time for a higher quality result.

2. Patience

These gardens take incredible patience. In this way the garden itself challenges the individual who works in it. For this, the peace of the garden must first be mirrored by the peace of the person, and out of this patience with oneself, the garden can emerge.

We need this patience with ourselves in order to create work that reflects ourselves. If we have this patience, we’ll achieve both for ourselves as well as the customers we’re creating for.

For digital projects, it’s often visible to the customer when the business has not had patience. For example, how often have you seen times when the Home Page of a website looked like a scramble of ideas, made incoherent by too many voices. A little more patience – to ask ourselves whether what we’re creating could be made more simple for our customers – helps remove confusion and introduce simplicity before the project is launched.

3. Care

Every stone has its place in a stone garden. And to achieve this requires care for the placement of every element. So often in projects we can realise an outcome without devoting attention to all the elements (whether it’s ‘time’, ‘cost’ or ‘quality’ of the result). While we will achieve an outcome, it may only be a fraction of its true potential.

Imagine what would be possible if we did work where we could give care to all the elements. We can follow this principle by introducing it in subtle ways to our projects. For example, in a recent project we tested User Interfaces with customers. We asked questions like “does this screens make sense to you, what else would you like to see on this screen, what questions does this screen create for you#8221;. These simple questions introduced care for our customers, and allowed us to realise changes which led to a better product.  Other methods include taking time up front to carefully think through wireframe processes to put ourselves in customers’ persepctives.

4. Beauty

There have been occasions where I’ve worked with teams that have delivered digital designs that ‘wowed’ people.

In these cases, people commented on the ‘beauty’ of the design. They said things like “it has everything I need, and is still great to look at, without being complex.”

When you receive feedback like this, it encourages a different sense of pride in the work. When people visit Japanese stone gardens, it’s common to be amazed by them and to have that ‘wow’ experience as a result of their beauty.

5. Simplicity

Zen gardens are revered because of their simplicity. Pebbles, upon stones, upon larger rocks, that provide a sense of being near water, when one’s away from it. Even though they are complex, when looking at any individual element of a stone garden they provide a feeling of simplicity.

So much digital work is ‘complex’ only. In every digital interface I’ve seen, there exists the same opportunity to represent simple and complex at once – to provide the user with a sense of richness without being overwhelmed. This is the goal of the optimum experience.

Apple’s store does an incredible job of this. On the page there is richness, and at the same time the design is elegant and easy to look at.

Question: What other principles do you follow to achieve fantastic digital design? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Photo Source: “The Art of Preserving One’s Own Culture and Heritage X (KYOTO/JAPAN/TOFUKU-JI)” by Chi King

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Rich Picturing is a technique to breakdown and simplify ill-defined problems and dynamic opportunities by drawing detailed (“rich”) representations of them. The technique has many applications and can include everything from quick sketches to detailed cartoons.

The value of the technique is to force us to think about any topic in a pictorial way, which helps us work with the subject more deeply and meaningfully.

In an earlier post I wrote about setting up experiments for this year. The fact is you don’t need to be an artist to create rich pictures. Over the last five months I’ve been exploring rich picturing as a way to accelerate my learning and rapidly explore questions. I’ve used the technique in diverse ways – from planning strategy papers through to summarising competitor activities – and every time I’ve found the process far more engaging than writing sequential notes.

Why I use rich pictures

Rich pictures help me accelerate my thinking and learning.  Here’s how:

1. A picture tells 1000 words: This old saying is absolutely true, even more so if you have a ‘visual learning style’. One of the reasons why infographics have become so popular is because at a glance they are far more effective at communicating large amounts of information. The same applies to rich pictures.
2. Far easier to interpret and remember: when I look at a rich picture I find the subject far easier to interpret, and far easier to remember. If interpretation and recall is a key measure of communication (and it is in most multi-million dollar advertising campaigns), then rich pictures are a very effective medium.
3. Representation of context and relationships : notes often present a linear path of thinking, whereas a picture is far better at representing the context and relationships involved in a subject.  The context might be patterns of cause and effect, sequences or processes, or relationships. For example, if I asked you to create a rich picture of your life, you would perhaps draw pictures of ‘work’, ‘family’, ‘friends’, and alongside these subjects the various sub-elements associated with them.  The ‘picture’ or ‘map’ you arrive at would likely be more ‘relational’ than cursive notes.
4. Stay engaged: when I take my notes as a ‘rich picture’, I am far more engaged in the subject I’m listening to. This helps me to absorb the subject in a deeper way.
5. A gesture of effort for others: creating a picture of a meeting shows how effectively you’re listening. Now and then after a meeting I’ve said to the presenter, ‘I hope you don’t mind but I took lots of notes’ and showed them the rich picture. On every occasion the presenter has been appreciative that this effort was made to understand their material.

How I use this tool

Here are some examples of some of the ways I use rich picturing:

1. Taking notes at meetings: I’m far more effective at summarising a meeting when I take notes as a picture.
2. Articulating components of a problem/opportunity: sometimes wicked problems are difficult to interpret  Breaking the components of a problem into chunks (a process often called ‘chunking up’ or ‘chunking down’) helps to focus on specific elements of the issue. Rich picturing helps us work through the specific elements of a problem.
3. Writing goals / targets / resolutions: for my New Year’s Resolutions this year, I wrote them as a rich picture, then scanned them, and reflect on them on a weekly basis.
4. Summarising research: some time ago I had to research the strategies and objectives of a Fortune 500 company. The way I did this was to read all of its annual reports and strategy papers.  As I did this I created a ‘rich picture’ of this analysis on an A4 page. The A4 page became as useful to me as the research itself in understanding the company’s direction and ambitions.
5. Planning presentations/papers: whenever I’m planning a major presentation, the first thing I do is sketch out the table of contents and main themes for the presentation as a rich picture. This helps me orient my research and fine-tune the message for the presentation. Then as I create the presentation I refer to this page as my blueprint.

Coincidentally, since this post I continued my sketchnoting and visual thinking journey, which led me to publish a book, A Simple Guide To Sketchnoting, on this subject.

Question: Do you have any particular way you take notes or do you planning?  Let me know by leaving a comment by here.

The post The Art of Rich Pictures to accelerate Big Thinking appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

We may be able to do this in the form of a mission or vision statement. Beyond this, to create meaning for our teams, we need to be able to connect these overarching statements with specific activities and outcomes.

In all of these circumstances, it’s very helpful to have rapid access to a framework that quickly allows us to summarise our purpose.  This framework can be something we picture in our mind, or something more concrete, such as a written document we can hand to people.

As a small case study, just last week I was helping The Water Well Project to express their purpose statement.  The Water Well Project is a non-profit organisation established by voluntary doctors to provide informal health education sessions to refugees.  The Project was in the process of submitting an application for a grant.  In the write-up for the application, the group expressed it’s purpose in paragraph format, like the example below.

I suggested it would be simpler for the organisation and their readers to ‘show’ the purpose statement in the form of a framework.  Together with the group we created this visual representation of their statement of purpose:

Download this Purpose Statement example (PDF)

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