Visual Thinking

Solving a problem cannot be done purely by thinking. Cognition is enhanced when it is embodied with action or graphics. Visual thinking becomes an extension of our brain and allows us to share and advance thought. Recent increase in information graphics and visual design is enabled by ease in technology and visual resources. I will look at patterns and how they may enhance and shape our understanding for thought. Andy Van Solkema, a graduate of GVSU in 2002, is the Principal Designer and Founder of Visualhero, a design studio focusing on design research, information and user experience design

Systemic design: Experiments to trigger pedestrian empathy in the urban system

It is inconvenient for people with different physical abilities – such as visual or physical impairment – to wander around public spaces. Issues of accessibility deficiency are not caused by single disciplines, like design. They arise from natural, cultural, social, and political dynamics, which in turn cause a lack of empathy in society and an insufficient inclusion of people with different abilities. They are systemic problems that require systemic solutions. Systemic thinking is an alternative way of thinking about relationships and patterns in systems. When thinking about and with systems, triggers outside the system can play an essential role in activating its evolution. When applied to landscape architecture, systemic thinking can shift perceptions that conceive design as problem-solving to its understanding as a dynamic system capable of learning from constant feedback loops between ideas, physical manifestations, and consequences. Design practice can also benefit from modeling majority-based systems and agent-based systems, which help understand patterns, relationships, and constraints. This thesis highlights accessibility deficiencies in urban systems and experiments with systemic solutions from components of landscape architecture. It applies systemic thinking to reappraise elements in the pedestrian system – one of the various urban systems – by triggering an empathetic consciousness between pedestrians. It proposes systemic thinking as a benefit for landscape architecture by accepting it as a set of dynamic and self-generated conditions generated together with the development of urban spaces

The Dao of graphic design— A Study of interrelationship between the Daodejing in Chinese daoism and graphic design

Dao has been accumulated for centuries and still remains strong and pertinent to the world today. It is a complex and intriguing philosophy that has many branches and colors. This paper is an analysis of the similarities and differences between the principles held in Daoism and Graphic Design. It is also an interpretation from my personal understanding of both. The concepts derived from my research are presented through several examples, which included the following design principles: Unity, Nature and Wu Wei. The purpose of this thesis is to serve as a bridge, which links concepts of graphic design with Daoism. This project visualizes the main text of Daosim--Daodejing-- and makes this classic literature easier to understand, and to applies the insights form Daoist philosophy to graphic design in order to find new levels of abundance in design solutions. This will allow for young designers to experience the essence of Daosim and experience a new way to approach the design process and understand the potential of good design. This thesis is formulated especially for those western graphic designers new to the field to experience the essence of Dao and apply it to visual communication solutions. So this thesis is formulated especially for those Western graphic beginners to help them experience the essence of Dao and apply it to graphic designs. This thesis supports the premise that Ancient Eastern wisdom and Western thought can meet together to break out of old patterns of thinking and behavior to create a new view of design principles and design thinking. Once graphic designers create their own design philosophy, it can help them to create more powerful and effective visual communications. During this learning process, designers may even have a view and attitude of their life. Designers will find their Dao around them and find their enlightenments

TRANSFORMASI PADA CORAK KAIN SONGKET SASAK LOMBOK SEBAGAI TIPOGRAFI IDENTITAS

The Lombok's Sasak Songket cloth has a unique visual style and has spiritual and cultural values. Through this uniqueness, the problem in this paper is about how the process of transforming the Lombok's Sasak Songket pattern into a typographic identity. The aim is to describe the process of transforming the unique patterns of the Lombok's Sasak Songket cloth into a typographic identity. The method used in this design process is Design thinking, namely empathize (get an empathic understanding of the problem being solved), define (analyze observations and synthesize to determine the identified problem), ideate (generate several ideas to solve the problem), prototype (produce several quantities prototype), and test (testing the complete product using the best solution) based on Agus Sachari's transformation theory. Data collection was carried out through observation and literature study. In conclusion, through the process of transformation, the patterns of the Lombok's Songket Sasak are grouped into four typefaces. The first face consists of an uppercase letter (uppercase); The second face consists of lowercase letters (lowercase); The third face consists of numbers and the last face consists of punctuation marks

Purposive Pattern Recognition: The Nature of Visual Choice in Graphic Design

Every pamphlet, brochure, booklet, advert, package, poster, etc that has ever been produced involved a visual choice made by a human being - even if the choice were restricted to ‘doing it like the last time’ or ‘copy this one’. Whether graphic designer, information designer, advertising executive, programmer, printer or the Managing Director’s wife, someone decided this picture, this type face, this layout etc rather than some available alternative. How are visual choices made? And, in particular, how do professional graphic designers make choices between visual alternatives. It was decided to probe this question by interviewing professional designers and looking at their work. The initial plan involved some sophisticated analysis of variables but it soon became apparent that such an approach was not possible. Specific interview questions such as, “You decided to use a picture of an elephant. Why an elephant and why this particular one?” met with responses along the lines of, “It just felt right” or “It’s intuitive”. It became clear that although some designers can tell a story about their choices, most designers make use of their experience and the experience of others to arrive at a decision that is not the result of some carefully thought out decision tree or a calculus of competing requirements. It was felt by both of us that there ought to be a better way to describe this process of ‘just knowing its right’ than intuition. Eventually we came up with Purposive Pattern Recognition, abbreviated to PPR. One of us (M A-R) gathered the evidence from interviews, case studies and existing studies of Masters in Design (a title awarded by a US magazine, following a poll of its readership) The other one (J Z L) placed the notion of PPR in a conceptual framework using current thinking in neuroscience and in evolutionary memetics. Keywords: Graphic Design, Intuition, Neuroscience, Memetics.</p

Psychotextiles and their interaction with the human brain

This work crosses the boundaries between design and technology, and it focuses on pattern design, its relationship with neuroscience and how new SMART products can be developed from this interaction. What we see in our environment has significant influence on our emotion and behaviour. A simple shape and form is able to impact on our emotions. This research has explored the emotional effect evoked by different visual pattern characteristics. Two paired pattern categories were investigated: repeating/non-repeating and weak/intense. Repeating patterns contain regularly repeating elements and have symmetrical and continuous features; in contrast, non-repeating patterns contain irregularly repeating elements and have asymmetrical and discontinuous features. Weak patterns are faint, light and simple compared to intense patterns that are high in contrast, bold and complex. The emotional response to each type of pattern was investigated directly by brain and cardiac activities of twenty subjects by electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) measurements and by self-evaluation; the former is used to measure the brain wave activity, and the ECG to analyse the heart rate changes. These physiological signals were then analysed, interpreted and correlated with people’s self-evaluation of their emotional response to the pattern. It was found that repeating patterns produce a more pleasant sensation than non-repeating patterns, and intense patterns evoke a higher level of excitement than weak patterns. The significant changes in the emotional effects found by changes of pattern and the good correlation of the objective and subjective emotional measurements encouraged the implementation of pattern change by design and production of SMART fabrics. Four knitted fabrics with the ability of switching their pattern appearance from repeating to non-repeating, and from weak to intense have been successfully produced with a purpose made electrochromic composite yarn. The emotional effects of pattern-changing of these fabrics have been further investigated. The notion of influencing human emotion by engineering the pattern design and characteristics of SMART textiles is established and these fabrics are named Psychotextiles. Finally the event-related potential (ERP) investigation of the visual brain (no thinking, or memory) revealed that there may be an influence on human emotional effects in less than 1 second from the time of seeing the object; a time sufficiently short for these to be little analysis within the brain

Creative User-Centered Visualization Design for Energy Analysts and Modelers

We enhance a user-centered design process with techniques that deliberately promote creativity to identify opportunities for the visualization of data generated by a major energy supplier. Visualization prototypes developed in this way prove effective in a situation whereby data sets are largely unknown and requirements open – enabling successful exploration of possibilities for visualization in Smart Home data analysis. The process gives rise to novel designs and design metaphors including data sculpting. It suggests: that the deliberate use of creativity techniques with data stakeholders is likely to contribute to successful, novel and effective solutions; that being explicit about creativity may contribute to designers developing creative solutions; that using creativity techniques early in the design process may result in a creative approach persisting throughout the process. The work constitutes the first systematic visualization design for a data rich source that will be increasingly important to energy suppliers and consumers as Smart Meter technology is widely deployed. It is novel in explicitly employing creativity techniques at the requirements stage of visualization design and development, paving the way for further use and study of creativity methods in visualization design

Knowledge Cartography: Software tools and mapping techniques

Knowledge Cartography is the discipline of mapping intellectual landscapes.The focus of this book is on the process by which manually crafting interactive, hypertextual maps clarifies one’s own understanding, as well as communicating it.The authors see mapping software as a set of visual tools for reading and writing in a networked age. In an information ocean, the primary challenge is to find meaningful patterns around which we can weave plausible narratives. Maps of concepts, discussions and arguments make the connections between ideas tangible and disputable. With 17 chapters from the leading researchers and practitioners, the reader will find the current state–of-the-art in the field. Part 1 focuses on educational applications in schools and universities, before Part 2 turns to applications in professional communitie

PROFILE OF STUDENTS ANALYTICAL THINKING SKILLS IN LEARNING STYLE FOR COMPLETING SUBSTANCE PRESSURE PROBLEMS

The skill to think analytically is an important skill for students to have, where the skill to think analytically helps students solve problems in science lessons that require an analytical skill to solve them. The research method is qualitative with a naturalistic design. This research was conducted at some Junior High schools in Ponorogo using the purposive sampling technique. Data were collected using in-depth interviews, observation, and documentation, then analyzed using quantitative descriptive and qualitative descriptive. This study aims to determine the profile of students' analytical thinking skills in solving problem-based problems in the grade 8th at pressure material and determine the pattern of its relationship with scientific exploration. The results showed that: 1) the profile of the analytical thinking skill in terms of the learning styles of students, namely the visual style subjects intend to explain what is known through the direct explanation in more detail, the audiovisual subjects are more likely to form simpler patterns with reasoning patterns generalization and on kinesthetic subjects tend to apply different (unique) concepts, but still have a relationship with the problem, 2) the pattern of the relationship between analytical thinking skills and learning styles, namely the exploration of science, which includes aspects of experience, reasoning, modalities, and the mindset of students. Through the results of this study, it is hoped that it can provide theoretical and practical insights for educators in determining approaches and strategies for achieving science analytical competence according to students' learning styles at school