“The Back of the Napkin” by Dan Roam
Odds are, you’ve probably never read a book quite like The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. One reason is that it’s a book written for the business world, not academia. Another is that, as a book on using visual thinking to understand and solve problems, it’s chock full of hand-drawn art. A third reason is that it’s shaped like a napkin and, indeed, the cover looks like it was drawn on a napkin. It’s a book worth reading, however, if you’re interested in finding new ways to communicate ideas to your students or in helping your students learn to think more visually.
In his book, Roam makes the argument that visual thinking can help anyone better understand and solve complex problems. He notes that many people are skeptical of this claim, in part because they assert that they “can’t draw.” Roam counters by noting that back in kindergarten, we were all artists and that our brains are “wired” to think visually. Roam says that visual thinking isn’t just about drawing, anyway. Two of the steps in his problem solving framework–looking and seeing–don’t involve much drawing. The other two steps–imagining and showing–do involve drawing, but one need not have any particular artistic talents to participate. Circles, boxes, lines, smiley faces–these simple components can be used to represent many complex ideas.
In addition to the look-see-imagine-show framework, Roam describes two other useful frameworks for thinking visually. One is a set of questions that can be answered visually that he calls the 6 Ws: who/what, how much, where, when, how, and why. Roam recommends a particular visualization tool for each of these questions:
- Who / What – Portrait
- How Much – Chart
- Where – Map
- When – Timeline
- How – Flowchart
- Why – Multivariable Plot
For example, if you want to answer a “How Much?” question, use a bar, line, area, or pie chart. (For examples of these charts, just open Excel and click on Insert Chart. You’ll see plenty of varieties of each.) If you want to answer a “When?” question, try using a timeline of some sort.
Which kind of portrait, chart, map, etc., might you use to answer your question? Roam provides another framework to suggest some options: SQVID.
- S – Simple or elaborate?
- Q – Quality or quantity?
- V – Vision or execution?
- I – Individual or comparison?
- D – Change (Delta) or as-is?
For example, a timeline might be simple (showing just a few events) or elaborate (showing many events grouped by category into parallel timelines). It might be qualitative (listing or showing characteristics of events) or quantitative (displaying concrete start and stop times). It might describe a sequence of events as they currently play out (as-is) or as they might play out given a change in process (delta).
Roam integrates these two frameworks, the 6 Ws and SQVID, in a “Visual Codex”:
It looks a little overwhelming, but Roam walks the reader through the codex over several chapters.
Teachers looking to integrate visual thinking in their courses in innovative ways should consider exploring Roam’s chapters on two of his visualization tools in particular–maps and multivariable plots. Check back here in the next few days for posts exploring those two tools.