Visual thinking is a critically important skill for interaction designers. 1
The ability to diagram an interaction is a foundational skill for interaction designers. 2
The world of software behavior is complex, multivariate, and conditional. The mind can’t grasp all of the permutations without a map, a visual map, an adaptive, explanatory, exploratory, working tool of a map. Of many maps. 3
I spent many years as a software inventor and programmer and visual thinking was vital to creating the complex edifice of “pure thought stuff” that was code. 4
I transposed that visual thinking directly to the world of practical interaction design. Visual thinking was a skill and activity that undergirded everything that our design teams did. 5
From the beginning, I insisted that every office, every room, at Cooper have a whiteboard. 6
Each whiteboard HAD to be BIG and it had to be porcelain-on-steel. Those people at Cooper who counted beans asked why pay $700 for porcelain when you could get melamine boards for $200. I insisted that we equip ourselves with the best tools for the most important jobs. 7
I also insisted that every whiteboard have a full set of fresh markers. Sometimes it takes all 8 colors to tell a complicated story. 8
If I picked up a marker to write on the board and it was dry or weak, I would unhesitatingly and ostentatiously throw it into the trash. Life is too short for shitty whiteboard markers. 9
I became infamous for throwing away dim whiteboard markers. I would do that at client offices, too. 10
At a client, we’d encounter a dim, crappy melamine board with one dim, pathetic. graying black marker in the tray. I’d throw it in the trash in front of the client. They’d whine, “That’s the only one,” and I’d say, “Time to get a new one.” 11
After a while, all Cooperistas acquired that same habitual intolerance of crappy whiteboard markers and would throw them away even before I could. I was bursting with pride over that. 12
If you can’t draw big diagrams on the wall that everyone can see, you can’t design complex systems. Period. And you aren’t communicating to your team, well, either. 12
In recent years, giant whiteboards have become a totem in tech companies. There are whiteboard rooms and whiteboard tables in the cafeteria. But, sad to say, I don’t see people actually use them the way we did. Constantly, expressively, as tools for discovering our thinking. 13
I always had a rule: Whiteboards are volatile! There is no such thing as “SAVE.” If what’s on the board is valuable, copy it down. Since the advent of digital cameras, that’s become trivial. 14
Whiteboards at Cooper were NEVER allowed to be places for notices or permanent messages. That would utterly defeat their purpose as instantly-available visual thinking tools. 15
One of the latter innovations in the design field is the use of PostIt notes as conceptual tools. They are useful for discovery, for crowd-sourcing, for participatory design, and for organization. I’m a fan. 16
But PostIt notes are generally stuck to whiteboards. PostIts on whiteboards kill the primary purpose of whiteboards: sketching. PostIts should not be stuck to whiteboards. 17
I walk into offices and see the whiteboards covered with PostIts and this is what it tells me: They listen, but they don’t hear. They gather, but they don’t analyze. They are attentive, but not creative. They have graduate degrees, but not practical skills. 18
I’m writing this thread because @davegray expressed concern that my complaints about “visually prettifying” screens instead of doing interaction design threw shade on visual thinking. NEVER! Visual thinking is a critically valuable skill for interaction designers. 19
