Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Using Visual Perception in Problem Solving

Visual Perception is one of the most used cognitive function. It helps us in moving around without running into other objects. It also helps us in finding our position and orientation in space. It is also instrumental in visual problem solving.

Dan Roem wrote a book "The Back of Napkin: Solving Problem and Selling Ideas" The book explains how images and pictures can be used to solve our complex problems and explaining ideas. Here is an example where he describes the difference in finding information between Google and Alltop information aggregator. "How You Find your Information Nuggets" According to him we do not need artistic talent to draw comlex pictures. Simple sketches as shown in this ewample will do the job of visual problem solving.

Dr. Robert Horn is a visiting scholar at Stanford university. He work in the area of Visual Language and wrote a book "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century" His web page at Stanford University illustrates his approach of Information Modeling using Visual Language. An optimum combination of pictures and words can create a very strong communiaction script. It can even help in developing visual information slides that can communicate across culture and disciplines.

In the video below Information Designer Tom Wujec talks about three areas of brain that are used in word, image and emotion processing. He gives an approach of using visual perception for solving problems using three steps:

1. Creating images that helps us in visualizing problems
2. By allowing interaction with the images
3. By making the results of all the first two steps persistence

He shows an example on how people at Autodesk use this for their internal tasks.



We spend a big part of our time in watching video screens that is constantly refreshed through a computer. With increased computing power and increased video screen resolution and size it will become possible to use icons and imagery to communicate ideas, concepts and collaboration for problem solving among teams. This will allow us to tackle some of the complex problems that seems unsolvable at this time. It will also reduce the over emphasis on the written words we currently have, reducing the burden on verbal part of the brain brain.

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