Visually Speaking

Visual language is used by practitioners to compress large pieces of data into simple consumable artifacts that our brains can more easily process and understand in a way that makes knowledge organic and natural. It moves our understanding from an intellectual requirement to natural understanding using pictures, shapes, and colour. Visual communication also stimulates the creative part of our brain and helps us access our own inner ability to innovate better and faster. It is a very powerful thinking tool.

Right now visual communication is the domain of visual practitioners like myself and we offer our services as graphic recorders, visual facilitators and visual coaches to companies and individuals. This field is rapidly evolving from a novelty to a more common placed practice in every business who wants to understand the customer's needs and bring that understanding more rapidly to the people who design products and services for their customers. We are at the point where people like me start making the processes and tools to communicate visually available and accessible to anyone who is in the role of creating those experiences for customers.

In today’s highly competitive world for the attention of the customer, it has become almost impossible to know how to reach them with traditional marketing efforts alone. What is needed is a new way of gaining insights into the real need, which often, customers won’t tell you they have simply because they can’t. So, walking up to them and asking them is not a solution. Observational insights are also challenging because what you see is no longer what you get. It is difficult because the drivers of customer preference are changing rapidly due to the fact that the world is becoming more integrated and so are services and customer expectations. The world is definitely becoming simpler – for the customer. If you can’t meet this criterion you’re out. Anybody who wants to satisfy a customer need will need an arsenal of new tools or at the very least add to their existing toolset and visual communication is becoming more and more essential to understand the need space.

Working visually is efficient and effective - as such it saves time, money and much aggravation. Comprehension increases, participation increases, the quality of decision-making tends to increase - all in all, working visually helps people more effectively see their circumstances, understand themselves and one another, and results in smoother decisions and agreements.  

Benefits of Live Recording - passive, off-on-the-side scribing:

• Collects key information without invasive questioning or interruption;
• Expands retention and understanding of key themes and main ideas;
• Increases the ROI for speakers & presenters (documents their crucial points);
• Builds a visual summary that leaders can use to summarize/interact with;
• Equips participants with a unique 'Takeaway' of their experience (paper or digital)
• Makes for easy sharing and communication of the 'Gestalt' of the event.

Benefits of Visual Facilitation - interactive, highly facilitated:

• Increases clarity and comprehension (People literally see what they mean);
• Boosts learning for visual and kinesthetic learners (over 88% of people);
• Heightens thinking levels (Enables higher level of dialogue and discussion);
• Saves time and increases efficiency by reducing repetition and redundancy;
• Lowers misunderstandings and helps resolve conflict;
• Increases the quality of decisions and understanding of commitments and accountabilities;
• Shrinks the need for traditional meeting minutes and reports (The charts become the report).

Tools of my trade

I work mainly with the Neuland product range because they're the best tools in the world for visual practitioners. This include markers, pastels, sketch note pens etc. For more information on where to get these in South Africa please visit https://www.drawnin.co or internationally https://www.global.neuland.com.

What do I do? I'm a full-time UX/UI Designer with a graphic recording side-hustle. You'll sometimes find me at Meetups and similar events where I rock up with my black book and sketch-note talks which I publish on LinkedIn and Instagram.

For more information about me please visit my website (going up soon!) at www.deonhanns.com or just get me on LinkedIn at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/deonhanns/.