The saying "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" still resonates with me, trite as it may be. I read about the literary origins of the phrase on Wikipedia and was also amused by computer scientist, John McCarthy's spoof: "As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture." Inspired by the work of Dan Roam and others, we've been trying to incorporate more visuals into our communications with clients and each other. In Lab this week, we put it into practice. We spent most of our session using Balsamiq Mockups and whiteboards to visualize our concepts for our current product idea.

I went from feeling very vague about the vision for the product to having some real clarity about different directions we could take. The visual communication made all the difference. I don't consider myself an artist and am definitely guilty of leaning on words as my primary communication tool. However, recently I've really been enjoying using pencil and paper (simplest tools necessary) to sketch out ideas when I'm grappling with a challenging problem. I'm amazed at how even the use of stick figures and basic shapes can bring new insight to a complex situation. Try it some time!

*Cartoon image above was licensed from Cartoon Stock.