VisualsSpeak blog

Innovation in learning was the theme of the Brandon Hall conference (IIL07) in Santa Clara this week. I’ll be writing a series of posts on a variety of sessions I attended, and will start with the one I facilitated.

Facilitating Learning with Photographs

The ninety minute session started with everyone selecting photographs to make an individual image on a piece of paper in response to the question: “What is innovation in learning?”

We then looked for patterns in the images. These visual patterns tend to be repeated over and over by an individual, regardless of the content. So you will tend to use the same ‘visual voice’ regardless of the situation. Knowing what you are most likely to do is helpful, especially when designing since sometimes your particular voice will be effective in conveying your intended message and sometimes it will not.

Conversations about innovation in learning

The participants worked in four small groups of 3-5 people. Each person got a chance to tell the story of their individual image based on the question “What is innovation in learning?”.

Then the members of each group were charged with coming together to create a presentation based on a shared vision of “What is innovation in learning?” for the rest of the participants. Each group had the same photographs to select from and were left to their own devices on on how they would go about the process.

The tape group

This group made sure everything was taped down, and cleaned up all the images at the end and put them back into the packages. They were so good at clean up , that the notes I took about their image got lost in the process. I remember a few key things about it. Perhaps one of the group members will add more to the comments?

• you need to include people who are different
• being on target
• expansive
• wine- the adult carrot
• willingness to climb in unconventional ways
• learning happens in relationship and with others
• needs to be all tied together
• using old things in new ways

3-D Cycle of Learning and Innovation

This group taped the background into a cylinder and made a three dimensional structure.

The foundation is people, who line the bottom. Need people for learning. Move up into building blocks, letting ideas follow. There are boats, fishermen, fishing rods, and the finished product. Going from A-Z, connecting links and ideas. There is measurement and growth. a bridge connecting back to the beginning, it’s never ending, you keep looking for how you can improve.

Labeling for understanding group

This group wanted to make sure everyone could understand the various aspects of their image, so they added labels to the sections. The group members had different ideas, and came from different directions. Having different sections created space for various voices.

• Be Wise
  • bringing in wisdom
• Have Fun
• Come together
• Stand Out
  • be innovative, do your own thing
• Be Free
  • think outside the box, all ideas, inspirations
• Re-Think
  • have other concepts
• Believe
  • extreme goals, but be lighter

With the different ideas, they had to come up with a central common theme, which they could then stem out from. Standing out served as the common ground. Then the other sections were added. At first it was hard for the more linear thinkers, but they kept building on top of things and it started making sense. It became circular and democratized as they started trusting one another.

One image group

This group talked for most of the time. They had two discussions before deciding on their image at the end of the time alloted. First they talked about recurring themes in the individual images:

• Learn in new ways
• Levels of learning - branching
• Growth
• Brain/Mind Burst
• Sharing of innovative thought

The other conversation they had was about going back to why they came to the conference:

• The creative energy
• Bringing creative ideas to life
• A variety of innovative techniques to enhance final productivity
• Learn how to use new products and services to enhance learning experience for learners
• Learning from others who are doing what I am doing

The team talked a lot about growth and mind burst. Kept looking at it to find one strong image that they could branch ideas out from. Some were similar and some different. Thinking outside the box became the visual with tangents. Innovative growth, going where you’ve never gone before. Interaction, with the different branches from different people. Clients and others at different levels enhancing learning experience. Learning from each other. Innovative thought, new ways, diversity of thought. Innovation of ideas.

What did we learn?

Throughout the conference the theme of ‘it’s not about the technology, it’s about the learning’ kept repeating itself. Jay Cross, author of Informal Learning, in his closing keynote speech reiterated this by using his participation in the VisualsSpeak presentation as an example. Jay liked my session, because it was low-tech and because it allowed a group of strangers to get to the underlying issues in an innovative way and in less than ninety minutes.

The VisualsSpeak ImageSet is a low-tech (Alright it’s really a no-tech tool. We’re still in denial.) tool for sparking innovative conversations. Nothing to plug-in, no fancy bells and whistles, and it doesn’t require an advanced degree to operate. It is a great tool, but it is just that; a tool. The real value is that using our tool gets people talking in ways that they normally wouldn’t. Using the tool won’t make you innovative or design better learning, it’s how you use the tool and how you apply the ideas that the process facilitates.

The same holds true for technology. If we don’t design an effective program, no amount of technology is going to make it good. It doesn’t matter how cool or innovative the technology is. The underlying teaching is the important part. Technology is only the vehicle that delivers the learning and makes it available to a wide audience. The high-tech aspects of the tool mean absolutely nothing without the underlying foundation of good course content.

As trainers, course designers, e-learning specialists, etc, we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into thinking that technology is going to solve the problems for us. A thirty year-old bicycle will get you two blocks down the street just as well as a Ferrari. The real challenge is knowing how and when to use the different technologies to deliver the most impact.

I would love to hear from others about what is innovation in learning.

• How do you go about innovating?
• What have you heard about that you think is innovative?

Christine Martell, Principal of VisualsSpeak LLC, will be presenting at the 2007 Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference on Tuesday September 25, 2007, 1:30 - 3:00 PM.

Using Photographs to Facilitate Learning

What is innovation in learning? Explore your ideas and what you’ve been learning at the conference using photographs to start the conversation. This experiential session will tap into the wisdom of participants using visuals to spark stories and to think about innovations in learning technologies.

Hope to see you there!

Create more effective training materials, blogs, websites, etc. by understanding how to use visuals that reinforce your message not detract from it.

The series

This post is the second in a series about visual elements in images. The first one, Are your visuals saying what you want? Part 1 Visual Elements is about dominant lines and shapes. The next will be about texture and pattern.

Changing the emphasis in an image with ‘contrast’

Your eye will naturally be drawn to areas of contrast in an image. You can use this to your advantage to control what part of a visual you want to call attention to. The intention of this post is not to tell you how to create these effects (done in Photoshop), but rather to begin to understand the elements in an image which contribute to the visual story, so you can make better decisions about selecting images to use in blogs, presentations, training materials, etc.

With enough practice, many people can learn to use Photoshop and other image manipulation software to emphasize the visual story you want to tell. The important part here is training your eye to ’see’ how your images affect what you are presenting. Even if you don’t have any desire to learn photo editing software, by grasping these concepts you will be able to convey the effects you want to create to a graphic artist much more easily.

In the image below on the left side, the painters blend into the building. By making the painters lighter in the version on the right, they stand out more. I also added more yellow to the sky which helps it to blend better with the yellow building and to better help keep the focus on the painters.

In the next image by adding ‘contrast’ to the sky, the focus of the image is shifted up to the top of the hill. The dark top left corner balances the dark in the bottom right, further encouraging your eye to focus on the center of the image. Notice how the image on the left doesn’t have a focal area and leaves your eye wandering in search of one.

This example is more subtle, but the cats eyes in the left-hand photo blend in with the surrounding fur. Adding some color and increasing the contrast makes the grey fur darker which makes the cat’s eyes more pronounced.

To dramatically change the mood of the photo on the left, I added a lot of ‘contrast’ and made the eyes whiter. We call this the “Manson Family Effect”.

Bringing attention to your visual story through color

Color theory is very complex. It took four years of art school and many years of practice afterward for me to really be able to work with it consistently and beyond having a ‘knack’ for it. I’m only going to scratch the surface here, with a few concepts.

Yellow is naturally lighter than other colors. As you saw above with adjusting the contrast in the images, in general your eye is drawn to the lightest areas of a photo, particularly when it is next to a dark area.

The photo of the bicyclists wearing yellow is just as it came off the camera. The jackets are bright yellow, but you might not realize how light in color they are until I change the color to bright red in the next photo.

When the jacket color is adjusted to red, you can see how light they are….most would say they are pink. The jackets appear to pop off the page and almost look detached from the bodies underneath.

When I remove the color contrast by making the jackets grey, they blend back into the photo. Notice how all the junk in the background becomes more evident. In the top two photos your eye is drwn toward the colorful jackets rather than the wire running through the woman’s head. Ouch!

Your eye doesn’t see like the camera. The eye is selective in what it pays attention to. The camera captures everything that is there. Sometimes by adjusting the color and/or contrast we can enhance what we want people to pay attention to and keep them from focusing on the things we don’t.

Here is another example. The original photo is on the left. The pink flower is quite bright and stands out. When I grayed the color, it sits back and the yellow above it becomes more important. There isn’t a strong focal point in the middle photo. When I tinted the pink flower to yellow in the far-right photo, the flower moves forward to being the focal point once again.

For maximum effectiveness you want to control where the eye of the viewer is being drawn, and align those areas with the most important elements of whatever you are trying to communicate.

Want to learn more about color?

One of the most important books about color is Johannes Itten’s , The Art of Color. While it is a bit dense, the illustrations are priceless. I have spent many hours studying this book. Luckily, there is an online mini-course that covers many of the principles in the book in an engaging fashion. Color Contrast & Dimension in News Design. It was created for journalists, and is well worth visiting.

If you’d rather just play with colors with some suggestions about what colors might combine to convey a particular feeling, try Palette Man.

If you have a color you are trying to find other colors to go with it, try Color Harmonies.

Create more effective training materials, blogs, websites, etc. by understanding how to use visuals that reinforce your message not detract from it.

You know that pictures make your training materials, blog, website, etc. more interesting. But are you using them as effectively as you could be? In this series of posts, we’ll be taking a look at what makes an image speak, to see if you’re getting your images to reinforce what you want to say.

What are the elements of the visual story?

There are a number of elements that make up the visual language of an image beyond the content of the picture. Here are some examples:

• Dominant lines and shapes
• Color
• Contrast
• Texture
• Pattern

In this post, I will focus on dominant lines and shapes. I’ll write about others next week.

Dominant lines and shapes

Here we have two photos of a dog swimming. Same dog, similar colors.

The dominant lines in the pictures are quite different. If you learned to read a language like English, your eye automatically starts at the top left side and moves to the right. The same holds true for images. Your eye will tend to follow the dominant lines in an image from top-left to right.

The picture of the dog with the ball in it’s mouth, moves the eye to the right along the diagonal, returns to the left along the bottom diagonal, then wraps around to focus on the dog’s face. The other picture brings the eye down vertically to a vortex of tension created by opposition of the lines pointing up from the bottom. The focus is the nose of the dog.

Even if you don’t consciously notice the dominant lines, your eye will subconsciously follow them. They will lead your attention, which is why identifying them can help you be more effective with the images you use for your blog, presentations, etc.

More examples

Here are some images to practice finding dominant lines and shapes. There are no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers. Each person will see things slightly differently, and that’s OK. You can see what I picked out of each one.

What do you want people to pay attention to?

Certainly, you want to select images with content that is related to the message you want to convey. Beyond that, you also want to help guide people through your content effectively. Paying attention to how the images are moving your audience’s eye can help you look at whether you are guiding their eye to the most important places on your page.

On your blog or website homepage, you will have a number of elements that may be competing for attention.

• If you have an image in the header, where do the dominant lines lead?
  • Is it to your post?
  • Your sidebar?
  • Off the sides of the page?
  • Are you directing people to what you want them to pay attention to?
• If you add an image to your post
  • Is it leading the eye through the content of the post, or away from it?
  • How do the lines and shapes relate to the sidebar(s)?
  • Is it adding or distracting?
• Are you leading eyes to what is most important to you?
• Does the visual emphasis align with the focus of your blog?

Take a look

How are the images working (or not) on your blog, website or printed materials?

The series will continue and we’ll focus on identifying other elements that can contribute to making the visual story as effective as the verbal one.

August was the month for the 31days to a better blog challenge. Only there weren’t enough hours in the day to get 31days of tasks done with all of the other things in my life. So, I have extended into September, and it may take even longer.

It’s not that I haven’t been working on this every day. Blogging is pretty simple to do, but very difficult to do well. All of the little details that make a difference collectively take time. Commenting, for example, can be really important to building community. In order to comment effectively, you have to read and think about the blog you are commenting on. Takes time. And when you are reading a wide variety of blogs, there are endless links to follow and interesting paths to run off on. Soon enough, one cat is sitting on the keyboard reminding me her food is a higher priority while the others are trying cute, leg rubbing and other assorted tactics. They are pretty hard to resist.
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