The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Video: Art (I Want You)

For all of your artists or artistic types wondering if what you make, makes a difference. You are not alone.

Music video for Tanya Davis' song Art by Andrea Dorfman.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being. --Carl G. Jung

(PS. Thanks to Nellie Durand for the link. Nellie makes LOTS of art. Check it out: http://nelliedurand.blogspot.com/)

The Hive Group: Visualizing the Stimulus Honeycomb

This interactive "honeycomb" diagram by The Hive Group was generated from publicly available data on the breakdown of the Federal stumulus package. 

(Thanks to M.Frisse who blogs on health IT and policy at http://www.markfrisse.com/policy/)

Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

In working with many diverse groups of people, coming together to solve complex problems, I am absolutely flummoxed by this paradox: young minds struggle with complex, inter-related problems, while "more mature" minds struggle to learn new concepts.

Rather than throw both brains out with the bathwater (what a badly mixed metaphor!) how best do we design collaborative projects and discussions that accommodate all brains, whether wily, worldly or wise?

clipped from www.nytimes.com illustration by Yarek Waszul When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, “Progress in Brain Research.” For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but  are taking it in and processing it.

Quick Primer on Graphs and Networks

The power and flexibility of a network--whether a simple group of casual neighbors or a complex next generation communication network--depends not just on the number of connections, but on the quality of the nodes, and more important, the type of nodes. Below is a fantastic intro to the concept of graphs and networks. It helps in understanding the a social graph and how it differs from a social network.   

Visualizing Flow

Graphic Facilitator, Bruce Flye, recommends an article Going with the Flow about a mechanical engineer at Duke who works with broad concepts in flow and does it visually. Adrian Bejan is a Romanian-born American professor of mechanical engineering and inventor of the constructal theory of global optimization under local constraints. The theory explains why a river delta looks like a tree or blood vessels.

Debunking 3rd World Myths with Animated Statistics

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world" using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid -- toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling's hands, global trends -- life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates -- become clear, intuitive and even playful.

Survey for GFs: What's Your Role?

This month, we are continuing the conversation that was inspired by our January survey question as to how easy or difficult it is to describe graphic facilitation.

This month, we want to know what role you play with your client.

1. Are you working with executives as a strategist?
2. Are you a consultant on a particular subject or industry who uses graphic facilitation as a tool?
3. Are you looked to as a facilitator who guides a group through a process?
4. Do you serve as a visual communicator turning ideas into images?
5. Are you primarily an illustrator creating images that tell a story?
6. Or a you an artist, bringing your personal vision to life through any means necessary?

We realize that the answer may be "all of the above"! Please feel free to comment and leave as rich a response as you wish.

Idiagram Visual Models

Marshall Clemens is simply complex.

Based in Lincoln, Massachusetts, he is the creative talent behind Idiagram. His visual models are superbly elegant and as well-pressed as a white Oxford shirt.

Check out his interactive model describing the Art of Complex Problem-Solving for a lesson in how simple an interactive description of complexity can be!

[Thanks to Kelvy Bird]

Rock, Paper, Scissors was SO Last Century

Over the course of 2005, David C. Lovelace of UMOP.com expanded the 3 variable game of rock, paper, scissors into twenty-five gesture monstrosity. Behold. Enjoy.