Visual thinking is basically the practice of using pictures to solve problems, think through issues, and communicate clearly. As children our world is dominated by stories, pictures and imagination. Visual and creative techniques can help reawaken natural visual and creative skills in adults. As a result, Visual thinking helps people brainstorm, process, organise, plan, and communicate information more effectively.

Visual Thinking expanded

One of the flexible and practical means of developing diverse approaches in the way we actively think, and work with ideas, is to use Visual Thinking.

The principle of Visual Thinking is very simple and applying the components together in the right way offers a powerfully and dynamic medium for better thinking and a effective way to free your imagination. Visual thinking is the intuitive and intellectual process of visual idea generation and problem solving. The process involves “accessing one’s visual imagination, whether in mental imagery or through drawing.

The thinking process relies on visual language – images, shapes, patterns, textures, symbols, colors – rather than on verbal language. Yet, visual thinking entails much more than visualisation. In short, visual thinking can be defined as an active and analytical process of perceiving, interpreting, and producing visual messages, an interaction between seeing, imagining, and drawing – graphic ideation.

This process of graphic ideation attains better thinking through synthesising 'left brain', logical and sequential thinking with 'right brain', intuition and pattern recognition in a form that enables our mental models to be questioned and restructured. This simple hands-on and transparent way of working with ideas rests on many years of research and testing in action.

Essentially, the drafts of the design process are hand-drawn sketches; like written drafts, sketches are not intended to be polished artifacts of communication, and visual notes do not require drawing skill, just as verbal notes do not require writing skill. The sketches and notes may only be intelligible to their creator, but that does not make them any less valuable or useful.

In fact, some consider visual notes and sketches to be more useful as thinking tools if they are quickly executed and somewhat vague because these characteristics may encourage the development of more possible interpretations of the problem. Two types of sketching are essential to the visual problem-solving process: the initial sketching that is done primarily to understand the problem and to generate ideas and the subsequent sketching that is done primarily to develop and record ideas.

The visual thinking tools, methods and techniques work independently of content, enabling them to be used successfully time and time again in a wide variety of situations.

Uncoupling information from its pre-existing context into single components of meaning and identifying assumptions releases ideas from how they were originally perceived. Now, through 'serious play' we are free to experiment with new patterns of relationships and a better understanding with richer options emerges. Instead of dealing with our issues and problems in isolation we can reshape the basis from which they operate to deal with them holistically – seeing in new ways – as visual patterns that build meaning – and imagining alternatives.