GenAI Sandbox by Visual Thinkery for UCD.

Bringing your research to life

Visual thinking and articulation has so much to offer the world of academic research. After listening to this podcast featuring Paul Nurse from the Francis Crick institute, I was ready to walk into their London offices and offer my services. Why spend months and years on a piece of research, only for it’s findings to be represented by a diagram that makes the reader’s eyes bleed?

We’ve used the Visual Thinkery creative process for many different research projects. We’ve created diagrams, illustrations and cartoons that summarise, highlight, or draw a reader into the research work that has taken place.

The Big Diagram

When it comes to an overarching diagram, things can get pretty complicated. How the pieces fit together, how important each part is, and how colour can be used to help understanding are all things to be considered.

Assessment for Inclusion by Visual Thinkery for UCD. Making a diagram feel easier to understand actually makes it easier to understand. This is Cognitive Ease.

Regional Resilience Journey by Visual Thinkery for Pathways2Resilience. Talking through the complexities of a diagram, explaining to someone from the outside world how it fits together and what it means, is essential in producing a visual that can be easily understood. We can reinforce words with icons to underline their meaning.

CEO’s Communication Content by Visual Thinkery for UKRI. This 3D landscape was a rework of an existing 2D arrow diagram belonging to UKRI’s CEO. By adding humans we make it feel more human. By adding hand drawn elements, it feels more genuine.

The Relationship Model by Visual Thinkery for University of Limerick. We used conversation with practitioners to explore every part of the model. This provided both the stories for each element, and the central metaphor of the mugs.

Visual Thinkery’s conversational process allows for exploration by talking around the subject. By stepping into the researcher’s world, we get to play the curious idiot (a phrase stolen from Einstein), and our questions prompt explanations. And in explaining anything to someone outside your world, you naturally reach for metaphors, stories and humour to illustrate your explanation.

Highlighting a particular point

Quite often, we create visuals that highlight a particular point made during the conversation. This can result in very simple portable cartoons useful for all sorts of contexts.

The Issue with Ranking by Visual Thinkery for UCD.

To use or not to use by Visual Thinkery for UCD. Often a cultural hook presents itself within the conversation, that can then be used to develop a visual idea.

Glimpses of a Parallel World

Cartoons allow the exploration of serious stuff through an alternate, more playful, lens.

Atmosphere of Legal Risk by Visual Thinkery for Thirty Percy Foundation. This cartoon for the Fiscal Hosting report breaks down an abstract point into a story – something the reader can touch and feel.

PhD Supervisor Archetypes by Visual Thinkery for GO-GN Guide to Doctoral Supervision. Penguins were originally a sort of mascot for the GO-GN community, and now they’ve sort of taken over. This visual uses the playful mask of the penguin to explore a very serious topic: different types of PhD supervisors.

Playing the Game by Visual Thinkery for University of Limerick. Here were exploring an invented world of a roleplay game. This allows us to situate the humour in the recognised world, and make a meaningful point about Teacher Training and tricky social justice issues.

Cascading Knowledge by Visual Thinkery for University of Limerick. This research project was based in Gaza, and the wider conversation often provides the context for the specific cartoons.

Ableism by Visual Thinkery for University of Limerick. Sometimes cartoons are created by joining a number of clues together, often from different parts of the conversation. Again, here we’ve created a related but recognisable world of Sporting objects to make a point about Ableism in Physical Education teaching.