What is visual thinking ?

Business analysts have to be able to communicate complex ideas and models in ways that the stakeholders can easily understand.

Visual thinking is defined as the graphical representation of systems or processes.

It is used to help the stakeholders easily understand the ideas being presented, and enable them to provide helpful feedback.

It is the visualizing and creation of simple visual concepts, graphics, models, diagrams, and constructs to convey and integrate non-visual information.

It helps the business analyst to analyze large amounts of information and understand complex relationships between contexts, stakeholders, needs, solutions, changes.

Once the business analyst understands all this then they can communicate the information to the stakeholders.

Visuals are used to represent complex information which would allow the stakeholders and audiences to quickly understand the information and other complex relationships.

There are some measures of effective visual thinking which include the following:

  1. The complex information is communicated in a visual model which would be
    easily understood by the stakeholder.
  2. The visuals allow for comparisons, pattern finding, and idea mapping of its components.
  3. The productivity of the enterprise increases due to effective learning and information retention.
  4. The stakeholders are engaged at a deeper level than with textual representation alone.
  5. The stakeholders understand critical information which may have been missed they were presented via textual content alone.