Video Transcript

Visual thinking isn't just about drawing pictures. It's about knowing when to apply those visuals when they're necessary and when they're relevant. A visual thinker uses images and words to capture the ideas and information that they hear or read in a summarized or shorthand sort of way. It's not about capturing an exact record of what's shared or suggested. You're constantly making a choice on what to draw and what to drop.

Filtering is the process your mind goes through as you're deciding what information is important and then how to capture it through words or images. The more proficient you are at filtering, the more likely you are to capture the right information for the circumstances and you'll get faster and more efficient the more you do it. Strong filtering feels like intuition - you'll know it when you hear it. But that's more so the case with topics and context that you're more familiar with. Things that you're practiced in or have more experience doing. If you're experienced in manufacturing, then a process map or a product journey will feel more intuitive than a customer journey or a software roadmap.

Part of visual thinking is learning to adapt to the filters that we have, the intuition we have, to new information. We learned to use the pieces of our filters that translate more universally so that we can apply them to different topics and be able to capture and process and communicate them more effectively. So even though a customer journey is different than a manufacturing process, being able to capture the systems and how they interact will be an overlapping type of filter. Even though you have specific filters to the experiences, the jobs, or the expertise that you have, there are universal filters that you have access to as well and are helpful to develop.

One such filter is 5ws1h or Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. You learned this filter in language and literature classes to translate books into reports and summaries. Journalists use it to filter conversations into news stories and headlines. These one-word questions align with how our brains like to categorize the information that we see in the world. Most of these are nouns in our sentences and paragraphs. They're the heroes, the settings, and objectives of our stories. The 5ws1h can be applied to any conversation you have or any report that you read. For a bit more clarity, let's go over each of them.

When you hear a WHO - a name, a title, an animal, or pronoun capture it.

When you hear a WHAT - an object, a product, a piece of software, an action, capture it.

When you hear a WHEN - a span of time, an hour, a day, a month, a year - capture it.

When you hear a HOW - a number of steps, a process, an interaction, relationship, or exchange, capture it.

My favorite to listen to is the WHY - the motivation, the spark, the goal ahead. So I capture it.

The 5ws1h is a filter that lets you pick out information from the noise. Even then, some answers and information will be more important than others. This is where your familiarity with the topic or other's familiarity with the topic will help you know what information is the most relevant.

Once you've decided what information is important, you have to choose what to draw, whether words or images best represent it. If drawing is new to you and you're used to writing out information, then initially you're going to lean more heavily into words. So my first bit of direction when you hear or read something that you feel is important is to go ahead and write it out. Whether that's a word or a phrase that summarizes it. Then I want you to come back and draw something that fits what you wrote.

Here are some things that should always be written. Proper nouns, names of people, places, products, etc. A date or time is often an important piece of information, and the way they are written is distinctly visual and easy to pick out. Numbers and money. Even when data is presented visually, they are always labeled with that key information. Quotes, exact phrases referenced or spoken that are worth remembering as they were said should be written out. And then there are lists. When presented with a series of items or tasks it can be best to just put them in a list. Fortunately, a list is a visual representation of some words to make them easy to find on a page.

So when should you include a drawing? Here are some cues that you should draw an image. Nouns. Who, what, where, even proper nouns are a high priority for visualization. Even if it's a generalized icon for a specific name. Goals. Goals are so important and the why behind them. Providing a visual that represents your North Star or your big goals helps you keep them in mind and keep you focused. Emotional things. Even if it's a simple emoji or something that represents the mood or feeling, it will help people feel heard and seen. Processes and systems. Complex things are so hard to hold in our mind fully. Showing the how and when of a system is important.

Lastly, anything you feel like drawing. Trust your intuition even at the start and learn what works and what doesn't. So now you know the responsibility you have to choose what's important and what to represent on the page. Start building your filter from your own experiences. Find out what is elevated and can be used when looking into new topics and ideas. Use the 5ws1h as a universal filter no matter what topic or idea you're looking into. And you have the five must-writes and the five must draws to help you out as well. You have permission to lean heavily into your writing. Write first, draw second. The more you use images with your words to capture information and ideas and process them, the more benefits you're going to see from visual thinking in your work.