Facing Complex Problems through Visuals: Visual thinking and visual communication practices to enhance understanding of complex problems

By Rodolfo Taboada Palomar

Abstract

New technologies, lifestyles, and other irreversible changes are generating unprecedented interconnectedness challenges and problems that we face in our society and our organizations. These changes are also bringing new possibilities to visual communication practices. In this major research project, I argue that rhetoric and logical reasoning, alone, are insufficient and must be enriched by visual thinking and visual communication to enhance better understanding, in the face of these interconnected and complex scenarios. Through a process of literature review and research of the main trends in professional practice on visual thinking and visual communication practices, this paper describes the particularities that make these tools so effective for facing complex problems. As I will argue, visual thinking and visual practices expand our ability to share common mental models, enhance participation and co-creative design, boost our understanding of complex information, facilitate data analysis and systems thinking, and enable us to connect emotionally with audiences.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada license (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/