Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity

Chapter 11. Storyboarding & Idea Mapping: How Innovators & Designers Work

Innovators and designers are people who want to see things come together in new ways that get results. Gathering information isn't sufficient. They want to understand connections and how things really work, and find ways to improve them. Storyboarding and idea mapping are two visualization strategies creative people use for designing. If you are interested in getting better results for your teams, students, or sales calls, there is no reason you can't use these tools as well. They are approaches that work very powerfully even if you are not experienced in them. This chapter is about showing how to apply these tools to your meetings, and get the breakthrough insights that they often support.

VISUALIZING TIME AND SPACE

We live in a river of action and steer with maps of the territory. Storyboards help you see the time flow, and anticipate the stages in a process. Idea maps help you understand all the elements in a situation, how its organized, and what choices you have.

How Do Humans Make Sense of Things?

Storyboarding and idea mapping reflect two fundamental ways we make sense of things at the big picture level of thinking. The first is how we think about things moving over time. The second is thinking about how things are structured in space. Ultimately we want to combine these—since humans live in both time and ...