Sketch It Out: Bionics+ Visual Thinking Training

Monday Email #3

Hi friends,

For this third and final Monday check-in I wanted to talk about building a second brain.

This is something that some of you are working on, physically connecting the human brain to a digital brain of one sort or another.

But the concept of a second brain also refers to using some external source (perhaps a program like Notion or Obsidian) where you store information that’s important to you, things that you’d like to refer to later.

Since visual thinking is about creating visual artifacts that help you think through or talk through important concepts, there’s some good overlap between visual thinking and second brain building.

I explored some of that overlap in this video: Sketchnoting and the Second Brain.

You might also enjoy checking out the work of Tiago Forte, who has literally written the book on building a second brain.

Finally, check out Zsolt’s Visual Personal Knowledge Management. He created an extension for Obsidian called Excalidraw to make it easier to use drawing and diagramming within Obsidian.

Since you work in a technical/science-related field, I thought you might enjoy some of those rabbit holes. If it sparks anything for you, let me know.

And don’t forget, the deadline for submitting your sketches to the Bionics+ Visual Thinking Compilation is April 9th!

Heres’ the background on that:

I’m putting together a collection of all of the visuals that were created as a result of this workshop series (which I’ll be sending out to you once it is compiled). I’d love for you to contribute one or two of yours, both to share the skills you developed over the last few weeks and also to show other members of the Bionics+ community what you’re interested in and working on. Please send it my way via email, and include a few sentences as a caption that I’ll include alongside the image.

If you need some support getting your sketch across the line, send me an email and let me know how I can help! (doug@verbaltovisual.com)

Cheers,

-Doug

Session 3

Thanks everyone for a great final session! I apologize for my computer freezing in the middle of it, hence the replay coming in two parts:

Resources:

Suggested follow-up activities:

Complete one to two visual artifacts!

I’m putting together a collection of all of the visuals that were created as a result of this workshop series. I’d love for you to contribute one or two of yours, both to share the skills you developed over the last few weeks and also to show other members of the Bionics+ community what you’re interested in and working on.

The deadline for submitting those is Wednesday, April 9th. Please send it my way via email (doug@verbaltovisual.com) and include a few sentences as a caption that I’ll include alongside the image.

And if there’s anything that I can do to help you get your sketch across the line, just let me know!

Additional resources:

Here are some videos that share more of the start-to-finish process of creating visual notes:

Thank you so much for participating in this workshop series! I hope you enjoyed learning about visual thinking and that the skills you developed have a positive impact on your work.

Feel free to keep in touch through my newsletter or directly through email.

Also keep an eye out for a third and final Monday Email, plus the compilation of your sketches (don’t forget the April 9th deadline)!

Cheers,

-Doug

Monday Email #2

Hello friends,

For this mid-session check-in I wanted to share some examples of using visual thinking to communicate science-related ideas. I encourage you to keep your current visual project in mind while watching, and see if some aspect of these visuals helps to move your work toward completion:

Let me know if anything that you see in those videos sparks some ideas for your own work!

I also wanted to give you a heads up about a culminating project for our workshop series. I plan to collect all of your completed visuals and share them in a compilation that shows what the members of Bionics+ are up to. I’ll put that compilation together a week after our third and final session on Wednesday, and I encourage each participant to submit one or two completed models. They don’t have to be perfect! The goal is simply to represent your ideas in a concise and compelling way. 

We’ll chat more about that on Wednesday (here’s the Zoom link), but I wanted to mention it here to provide a bit of extra motivation for you to get going on your visuals!

Cheers,

-Doug

Session 2

Great to see everyone again! While our first session was focused primarily on instruction, this session leaned toward the sharing of work and discussions around the questions and challenges that came up.

Here’s the full replay:

Resources:

Suggested follow-up activities before our session next week:

  • Refine one of your models that is already in progress
  • Start a new model to give yourself the chance to work through the Sketch It Out cycle
  • Observe the way you see scientific information expressed visually, and pull elements that you find to be useful into your own work

Additional resources

Books:

Tools:

Feel free to email me throughout the week with any questions or feedback requests!

doug@verbaltovisual.com

Till next week!

-Doug

Monday Email #1

Hello friends,

I hope you’ve had the chance to stretch your visual thinking muscles a bit since our session last week!

In that session I introduced the Visual Language Ladder as a way to think about the progression of visual elements that you can bring into your work, climbing from words to shapes to objects to people. 

Though I briefly described an approach to drawing stick figures, I thought it might be helpful to share a few short tutorial videos that address the whys and the hows of bringing people into your visual communication:

I hope you find those to be useful! If you get the chance, try applying those lessons to whatever visual you’re working on right now.

See you on Wednesday,

-Doug

Session 1

Thanks for a great first session! I enjoyed learning about your work and exploring the role that visual thinking can play within it.

Here’s the full replay of today’s workshop:

Resources:

Suggested follow-up activities before our session next week:

  • Pick up where we left off at the end of the session and complete your first visual asset – a drawing or diagram that summarizes the topic you chose to focus on.
  • If you’re able, share that visual with someone you work with and see what resonates and what doesn’t.
  • If you’ve got the energy and interest, identify a second topic you’d like to sketch out and use the approach you learned about today to create your second visual!

We’ll kick off next week’s session with a show-and-tell / Q & A where you’ll be able to share how that work went and pose questions related to any hangups. 

Additional resources (explore at your leisure):

Rob Dimeo’s paper on Sketchnoting Science and his Flickr page. 

Visual book summaries that I’ve created on the Verbal to Visual YouTube channel.

Imagery resources:

Books:

I’d also like to share the digital version of The Verbal to Visual Notebook, which is a workbook that I developed to help folks get comfortable with visual note-taking. It’s full of prompts and activities for you to try out. Take a look, and dig in if you’re so inclined.

If any questions come up throughout the next week, don’t hesitate to reach out: doug@verbaltovisual.com.

Looking forward to our next session on March 26th from 14:00 to 15:30 (here’s the Zoom link for easy reference). 

Until then!

-Doug