Chuck Frey publishes Ultimate Guide to Visual Thinking Tools

Following the recent publication of his recent “Ultimate Guide to Visual Thinking Tools”, we sent some questions to renowned author and visual thinking expert Chuck Frey to learn more about this latest research and writing project! 

What is the Ultimate Guide to Visual Thinking Tools?

It's a comprehensive guide to 15 types of visual thinking tools. It helps you understand what each type of tool is, what it does and the high-value tasks it can help you with. Ultimately, they can help you transform how you think, plan and achieve results.

What is the structure/format/content of the book?

It starts with an overview of where we are today - a world where every knowledge worker is facing a tidal wave of content like never before. I make the case that AI has made information overwhelm at least 10 times worse than before, if not more. It can generate a mountain of information in just seconds - which you must then pore through to discern what's accurate, relevant and actionable.

I also explore the shortcomings of linear thinking tools, such as documents, slide decks and spreadsheets. They were designed two decades ago for a world that no longer exists. They tend to hide meaning, context and patterns in endless paragraphs, sentences and wordy bullet points, making it almost impossible to achieve clarity.

These two factors mean that if you want to differentiate your work, increase your value and make a bigger impact, visual thinking tools are no longer just a nice-to-have but a must-have. 

Next, I walk through the advantages of visual thinking tools and share three examples where they have made a big difference in my work. I also present a simple framework for selecting the right tool for your needs and provide a selection chart to go with that. It lays out all 15 tool types and 42 common business tasks in a matrix chart, making it easy to see which types can help you be more productive and creative.

I also reveal a caveat that you must keep in mind when considering visual thinking tools: They can't overcome poorly-organized thinking.

I then provide profiles of 15 types of visual thinking tools - including a definition of each type, recommended applications, pros and cons, notable tools in each category and additional resources you can explore. This type of information has never been curated in a summary format like this before.

The book closes with a simple, 3-step process to help you get started and a challenge to elevate your thinking - and your results - with visual thinking tools. 

Who is the intended audience?

Anyone who must capture, organize, distill, make sense of information and transform it into outputs - decisions, reports, strategies and more. That encompasses strategic planners, marketing managers, creative and critical thinkers, leaders, managers and more.

If you’re looking for a way to become indispensable in your work, this guide will arm you with the knowledge and insights you need to make a difference with visual thinking tools.

What problems does the book help them to solve?

It helps them understand how to overcome information overwhelm and uncertainty by looking at their challenges in a family of new, transformative ways - visually. It then guides them in the direction of the tools that will help them to get there.

It can save them a lot of time. If you tried to find all this information and the context surrounding it on your own, it could take weeks. And you still wouldn’t have access to the insights and advice that I offer as the world’s leading expert for visual thinking tools.

It gives them a roadmap to discover clarity and revolutionize how they think, plan and create.

What motivated you to do this research and writing? 

During the last decade, the number and variety of visual thinking tools have exploded. At the same time, the nature of work has evolved to the point where the ability to externalize your thinking and visualize your work is more important than ever today.

I decided it was time to do a survey of the visual thinking tool space so I could help my readers to understand and benefit from it.

Why do people need visual tools at all?

Think for a moment about the ways in which people typically capture information. In addition to writing notes by hand, you can do so by typing into notes in a personal knowledge management application or into a traditional document, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

While that may be efficient from an information capture standpoint, it's not from the standpoint of trying to decipher what you have gathered, determine what's most important or actionable and how to organize it to enable clarity. These tools, which capture information and ideas as words, sentences and paragraphs, were never designed to be thinking tools. 

Now look at the nature of work. Information overwhelm is worse than ever thanks to AI. We are dealing with greater uncertainty and ambiguity than ever before. We need better tools to help us make sense of it all.

What visual tools have in common is that they enable us to capture information in a variety of skeletal formats and manipulate it with almost complete freedom. That enables us to group related ideas together, annotate them based on their characteristics and extract meaning and clarity from them much faster than ever.

These tools actually do make a difference. Every few years, I survey my readers about their use of mind mapping tools. They tell me that, on average, these applications help them increase their productivity by 30% and their creativity by 50%. I usually ask them what the biggest benefits of mind mapping tools are. The ability to achieve clarity is always at or near the top of the list. These are game-changing statistics!

For anyone who is frustrated with trying to keep up with their ever-increasing workload or wants to make a bigger impact in their career, visual thinking tools are no longer a luxury but a must-have.

What defines a visual thinking tool in your view?

As I explain in the book, visual thinking tools have five common characteristics:

Spatial Organization: 

Unlike documents or spreadsheets that force you to think sequentially, visual thinking tools let you organize information spatially. This means you can place related concepts near each other to show relationships. They also enable you to create visual groupings that make complex information more digestible. That leads to greater clarity.

Non-Linear Structure: 

Visual tools break free from the tyranny of sentences and paragraphs. They allow non-linear forms of arranging and presenting information that make it more understandable. Two examples are radial thinking, which starts from a central concept and branches outward, and network thinking, which enables you to depict multiple relationships between ideas. They also enable you to treat each idea as an independent object. That means you can arrange and rearrange them in ways that are most meaningful to you.

Visual Hierarchy: 

Visual thinking tools use a variety of techniques and methods to communicate meaning and hierarchy. For example, using shapes or size variations to show relative importance, or using color coding or icons to categorize information visually.

Collaborative Features: 

Modern visual thinking tools are built for teamwork: They enable real-time co-working on maps and diagrams, commenting and voting on ideas, integration with other business tools and other powerful features that enable teams to get work done efficiently and visually.

Export & Integration Options: 

Finally, the best visual thinking tools are designed to be part of a larger ecosystem of business tools. Many of them can export visuals in multiple formats, so they can be integrated into reports or presentations. Some of them offer APIs for custom integrations. Others make it very easy to embed visuals into web pages, collaboration environments like Microsoft Teams and Slack, and into presentations and documents. 

What insights will I gain from reading this book?

What do you do when you need to repair something in your home? Naturally, you open your toolbox. Which tool do you select to handle the repair? The answer is, it depends upon the task to be done. Your toolbox contains specific types of tools that are designed to efficiently do specialized tasks. It's the same way when it comes to software applications and visual thinking tools. Each one has specific strengths and weaknesses. This book will give you a deeper understanding of which tools you ought to use to help you efficiently and creatively solve your work tasks.

How will this help users of mind mapping tools?

Mind mapping tools are very versatile. They can help you with many common work tasks. But they're not a panacea. For example, if you need to map out a workflow or business process, a diagramming tool can do that much better. If you want to design an infographic, you wouldn't use a mind mapping tool to do that. There are graphic design tools that are designed to do that.

If you're an avid mind mapper, you've already got a great head start. You already understand the power and utility of externalizing, capturing and organizing your ideas visually. I recommend that you read this book to understand what you can do with the other 14 tool types. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what lies just beyond mind mapping.

It seems tools fall into two categories: those that help you think visually, and those that help you present visually. Can you explain a little more for us?

The first category of tools you mentioned are those that help with thinking, or organizing, planning, distilling and sense making. These include categories like mind mapping, concept mapping, diagramming and whiteboarding.

The second category you referred to are those that help you present information in ways that increase understanding and clarity. These include infographics, graphic design tools and of course presentation tools.

Both categories have a place in today's world of work. For a number of years, I have said that knowledge workers tend to have a fairly common set of needs: They need to be able to gather, organize, distill and communicate information with clarity, persuasive power and impact. Visual thinking tools help them to do that from beginning to end, from brainstorming and information gathering to sharing the output with the people you need to influence.

What are the risks of using linear tools for visual tasks?

If all you're doing is writing reports or creating simple content, linear thinking tools like notetaking apps and document-based word processing are certainly still adequate. But if you want to do any type of brainstorming, thinking, planning or analyzing more complex or ambiguous information, then you will increasingly find yourself at a serious disadvantage. These tools are simply not designed to support those types of non-linear tasks.

Consider brainstorming. Either alone or in a group, you capture as many ideas as you can. You may also do some research to find sources of inspiration or capture solutions that people have used in other industries or professions to solve similar problems. As the next step, you need to organize, distill and evaluate all the ideas you've gathered. That is best done in a visual environment, where you can move ideas around as discreet objects, forming them into natural groupings and adding metadata to them that helps you evaluate them. Most importantly, you're able to see your ideas in relationship to each other.

The scenario I've just described is almost impossible to do with the linear thinking tool. But it's something that visual thinking tools are perfectly suited for.

As the volume of information we must manage continues to increase and we’re challenged by growing levels of ambiguity and uncertainty, the liabilities of linear thinking tools and the benefits of visual thinking become impossible to ignore. 

Where can I get The Ultimate Guide to Visual Thinking Tools book?

It's available on my website at https://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/ultimate-guide-to-visual-thinking-tools/