VisualsSpeak blog

Adam Chan was a participant in the session I facilitated at the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) conference in April. He purchased a couple of VisualsSpeak ImageSets to bring back to Singapore.

Adam works for an interesting company, Focus Adventure ‘Where every moment is a challenge’. They use outdoor adventure of all kinds along with experiential techniques for leadership, team building, and innovation. You can see a video on their homepage. Made me want to sign up!

Facilitating his first session

When I met Adam, I could tell he had a lot of interesting ideas. So I asked him to keep in touch as he started using the tool. I just knew he would find creative ways to use it that all of us in the VisualsSpeak community will find useful. Here is his first report:

The internal learning session was conducted on 2 May 08. My peers are absolutely amazed by its (VisualsSpeak ImageSet) ability and potential to create openness at a level they have not experienced before. Apologies, I don’t consider myself as en expert in this so I stayed pretty close to the way you have conducted in the IAF session but a slightly compressed one as I have only 1.5 hour. In summary, this is how it was done;

• Started with a brief introduction on what VisualsSpeaks is.
• Each learner receives handouts on pattern recognition.
• Each learner receives a base (about 40cm by 30cm) to work with.
• Divided into two small group of 6, given only 5 minutes, each learner to select any number of photos that will represent “yourself”.

Some interesting observations captured were,

1. Some did not use the base, they simply lay the photos on the floor. Participants replied, “ creativity has no boundaries” when asked why the base wasn’t used
2. Some selected photos were overturned but were found beside the frame formed by the participant. The participant was asked why those photos were selected but not revealed. We didn’t get a concrete reply but it was interesting enough to just ask the question. We all agreed that the act carries meaning that is implicit and not groundless.
3. Listeners should try to look at the frame with the same perspective as the creator, i.e. nobody should stand opposite of the creator.
4. One participant formed a frame that has no humans in any photos but only nature. It could very well mean he prefers the nature to a crowd, introversion, reserved, etc.
5. A few felt that the least instructions from facilitators, more room can be given to creativity and also allowing more implicit information to surface
6. As a facilitator, the expectation cup should be emptied to avoid any unwarranted influences.

Overall, the experience was great.

Results!

I’m especially excited by Adam’s results for a couple of reasons:

• while we tested the VisualsSpeak ImageSet with people from around the world, most of the images were created in the US
• it worked in a setting that is very different from where it was created
• Adam got excellent results after just three hours of training

Our dream is to create add-on sets of images to broaden the applicability of the tool. We want other photographers who represent very different viewpoints to add to the collection. This will make it more usable globally, with more inclusive images. But, the core set has to be solid, and having facilitators bring it into other countries is a way to test that at a new level. So thanks Adam, we look forward to hearing how we can make the image selection even better for your area of the world.

Affirming Adam’s observations

These are great observations, aligned with much of what we have observed over the years.

• Some did not use the base

Offering a background for people to assemble their images serves a couple of purposes. One, there is a segment of participants that really enjoy working with a defined space. They don’t know what to do without a defined area, so the background is important to them. Second, how someone responds to the idea of a background gives you a lot more information about how they think.

With a group of experiential facilitators and people who work for a super creative company like Focus Adventure, I would expect some to reject the background. There is no end to what people come up with, and the best part about it- it’s all OK. It just provides more to talk about and makes our differences quite vivid and clear.

• photos were overturned

I totally agree that there is meaning to the overturned photos. Not all the time, but it can be very significant. I have seen people have deep insights when asked about images that are hidden in some way. I have also seen a lot of emotion, with crying and even deep sobbing. It can be very powerful in a coaching situation when you are one-on-one. It can be very uncomfortable for some people if that happens in a larger group. Especially in a work setting.

I proceed carefully. With a group, sometimes I will point out to them as a whole that they may want to reflect on things around the edges of their images. Often people who feel safe will share insights, while others will stay quiet and I just respect that.

• same perspective

This is interesting to me. Yes, looking at the image from the same side as where the creator is describing it helps you understand their perspective. So, if that matches your session objective, it could be helpful. I have also observed people who are on the opposite side see something, and when they mention it, it offers an insight to the person who constructed the image.

If you are looking for creative insights, innovation, and breakthrough, I would intentionally look at things from different sides. So this is a good example of how the process might flex depending on your desired outcomes.

• no humans in any photos but only nature

I also suspect I am working with someone who is more reflective when I see images with no people. I listen carefully to their stories for clues that confirm it or not.

• least instructions from facilitators

I’m totally on board with this one. I’m always saying no rules, just a time limit. Participants do amazing things, and I never tire of listening and seeing what they come up with.

• expectation cup should be emptied
  

I love this. So insightful. I think this is the hardest thing for most people to get used to using VisualsSpeak. The more you, as the facilitator, can lessen your expectations of what the outcomes should be about the better the process will be. If you allow it to happen, magic can occur in the room.

Thanks Adam and the team at Focus Adventure for sharing with all of us!

Christine and I were inspired by something we read recently about how to involve a community of people and businesses in donating to non-profits doing exceptional work. This is what we came up with. Your input about our approach would be greatly appreciated.

We are inviting the VisualsSpeak Community to donate to a good cause. And it won’t cost you a cent!

Send us your VisualsSpeak story and we will make a contribution to Mercy Corps. This Portland, Oregon based group has a global perspective. Presently they are contributing their resources to relief in China and Myanmar after the recent disasters there.

This is a Win-Win-Win scenario:

• You win - Your story is converted into dollars and then contributed to an organization doing great work on a global level.
• VisualsSpeak wins - We get your great stories to share with current and potential community members.
• Mercy Corps wins - They receive money from our community to help continue their great work.

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against nearly impossible odds. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1.5 billion in assistance to (more)

The Details

Send us a story* about something that happened while using VisualsSpeak. This might be about a time when there was a significant breakthrough, or something unusual happened, or new insights were inspired, or anything you think others might want to hear.

Include as much detail as possible such as:

• Who was the audience?
• What was the purpose of the process?
• Where did this take place?
• How did your participants respond?

Please include the following information about yourself: (as much as you like)

• Name
• Title/ Profession
• Company/ Organization
• Website/ Blog
• Digital Photograph (or where we can find one on the web)

How to send your story

• Leave your story as a comment on our Blog post “What’s your story?”
• Send a separate email to info at visualsspeak dot com

Show me the money!

• VisualsSpeak LLC will donate $10.00 per story
• Christine & Tom will personally contribute $10.00 per story for a total of $20 per story
• $300.00 total potential donation! (15 stories)
• Donations to be tabulated on June 18, 2008

Why?

We believe in giving back. And one of the ways to give back is to support organizations doing great work. There’s not enough time in a day to do everything, so contributing to groups that benefit us all makes sense.

* By sending your story to VisualsSpeak, you agree to give us permission to use it in various ways including but not limited to our website, Blog, and marketing materials.

Thanks for your story and for supporting an incredible organization like Mercy Corps!

More often in life, making a difference is about all of the small steps we take along the way.

Yours in service,

Christine Martell & Tom Tiernan
VisualsSpeak LLC

I’m not leaving my usual focus on all things visual, just adding my weekly report on an online blogging project I am participating in.

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Day 8: Comment outside nicheIn order to comment outside my niche, I would have to have a niche. I write in an obscure area, and see my roles as varied, so my blog reader is full of a diverse range of topics. Good thing, it made it easy to complete this task, since it is already something I regularly do.

Day 9: Should we comment on blogs?

The thing I most appreciate about blogs is the diversity of approaches. If a blog is new, I recognize that someone may have not decided how they want to approach the blogosphere, but for a more mature blog, it seems reasonable that a blogger may make a variety of choices for reasons that are individual.

Day 10: Comment Audit

This day asked us to look at how our blogs might affect whether we get comments. Over the course of this blog, I think I have done everything on the list that might deter people. I still struggle over voice, who I am talking to, who I want to talk to, and who might care about what I have to say. Of course, this reflects some of my own confusion about the direction my business in general is moving. It’s an ongoing action research project. I try things, watch how they go, and redesign.

Day 11: Comment Policy

I have a bunch of redesign I am working on behind the scenes, so a comment policy will be added to it. I was particularly taken by Kevin’s concept, where he extends an invitation. So much more appealing to me than a policy per se.

Day 12: Comment Friendly?

Since this is a business blog, I do not feel comfortable taking moderation off for first time commentors. I have caught enough objectionable comments to feel comfortable with this.

Day 13: Post using comments

Since the comment challenge began, I have been writing posts based on reader comments or requests. It started with a comment on Sue Waters blog from Christy Tucker about her new blog header, and I responded with Does my header make my blog look fat? . Jabiz Raisdana asked about his headers on that post, so I wrote, What makes these blog headers effective? Then I got an email from Fred Deutsch so I wrote What to do with a visually noisy blog and Suggestions for a visually noisy blog.

I have enjoyed writing these posts since it has provided me concrete examples of visual patterns to demonstrate how they affect what we do online. I can’t do it all of the time, and it might be very boring after a while, but I hope it has been helpful to readers and the blog owners alike.

Day 14: Turn blog over to readers

Ok, so have you found the series on blog headers and patterns helpful? Interesting? What could I do to be more helpful? Any opinions, I’d love to hear them.

This is the second post for looking at the visual details that effect how we read a blog. Part 1: What to do with a visually noisy blog focused on the design of the template that was modified for the School of Thought blog.

Part 2: Ideas for visually simplifying a blog

First I want to acknowledge the blog we are talking about in this post is chock full of great information and resources. So the goal here is to make that come front and center in a way that isn’t quite so visually overwhelming.

When I started blogging there were so many cool widgets and things to stick in my sidebar that I wanted to try them all. Even being conscious of the visual impact, I still did it. Then I read Skellie’s 50 Ways to Unclutter Your Blog. It really helped me to think more in terms of the readers perspective and about what I was trying to do. I pulled a lot of stuff off my blog that day.

What are readers looking for when they come to your blog?

I think this may be really different from blog to blog, and perhaps from reader to reader. When I come to a blog, the first thing I look at is the tagline for an overall sense of what it is about. I want to see who the author is and something about them. I look for categories or tags so I get a general overview of the topics the person is writing about. Therefore, when I look at the visuals on a blog, my opinions are influenced by what I want to see. Ultimately what works for a particular blog is a balance between what the owner is trying to convey and their readers’ needs.

Customizing a template

The School of Thought blog uses a customized version of Stardust, which I talked about in part 1. The most obvious difference is that the two column design from the original template has been converted to three columns. In the last post we talked about how people read in an F pattern on the web. When there are three columns, the reading pattern is slightly different. The eye can go on several paths, which may become confusing.

Sue Waters wondered:

Based on how you have explained people read online I now wondering how whether a left and right sidebar change this reading pattern and are they competing for attention with the post?

And Sue Wyatt saw it like this:

I never thought about the way my template might be read - choices of colour, number of columns, left to right in F pattern. I went into Fred’s blog and immediately the black writing got my eye, but further down the page the red on the left drew my eye first. I don’t think I even looked at the right hand side.

The second thing is the decorative flourish that separated the post from the right sidebar, in the original template, has been removed. The flourish provided a visual diverter to keep the eye going back to the posts. Without it, the visual path leads the eye almost off the right side.

What else is affecting how the eye moves?

The picture of Fred helps lead the eye into the post. The description below the photo appears as a grey rectangle. There is nothing to break up the block. Therefore, even though the words are situated in a place which normally would get a lot of attention, they melt into the background. I wouldn’t normally read something in a block like this. The content is great; warm, welcoming, engaging. But you have to get people to read it to know that. Sue Waters noticed:

Fred’s image plus information on the left is dominating the blog dragging my eyes to the left. I don’t think that is a bad thing but feel that the wording needs to be shortened and broken up to make it more concise.

How might you do this? Break it up into shorter parts. Use some bold? Maybe a bullet? Use a shorter excerpt and lead people to a longer version on the About page? Lots of choices.

As you scroll down, there are long lists of red links in small type. To my eye, when I try to focus on reading the post, it feels like the red links are trying to pull my eyes in two directions. Since it is a flexible width blog, I can reduce this on my 23″ Cinema Display, but there isn’t enough room on the 17″ monitor on my Windows machine at home. It gets even more dramatic on my 12″ laptop.

Manish Mohan saw it this way:

On Fred’s blog I basically read through the middle column. The text was easy to read in the middle. The side bars (left and right) have very small font text. So even though the color is red, and like you say pulls the eye, I ignored it completely. Perhaps it is because unconsciously I know that the main content on the page is in the middle column, perhaps because the middle column is significantly easier to read with bigger font. Only after I had scanned through the posts content did I review the page again for snippets on the sidebars to see if there was anything interesting.

Prime Blog Real Estate

For any blog, the things that are most important to our readers should be in the most prominent places on the blog. This may vary from blog to blog, but I suspect for a large percentage of people the most crucial elements are:

• Name of the blog
• The tagline (what it is about)
• Something about the author
• Where to subscribe
• Categories or most popular posts
• Ads if you are blogging for income

The prime real estate on a blog are the header, the top of the sidebars and anything that is above the fold (meaning things that show without having to scroll).

Right now on Fred’s blog we have the name, tagline, how to search and a way to subscribe labeled RSS in the header. At the top of the sidebar on the left is a picture of Fred. On the right where the eye is being most strongly lead, there is a link that brings you to another site. Underneath it is the login area for the author.

Suggestions?

There are lots of possibilities and a variety of reasons you might go one way or another. If there are statistics available, I would look at what people are clicking on. That would help me see what is important to my readers.

Here is one idea. It’s a sketch I created by taking screenshots and rearranging them, so it’s just to get an idea of how this might look.

I would select the most important links on the site to go in the left column. I usually put my categories here. Fred has a lot of link lists, and it’s not clear to me which ones he thinks are most important for his readers. I would identify what they are and put them here. Right now, categories are in a drop down menu, and there are lot of them. I’d think about shortening the number of categories and listing them out to make them more accessible. I would also place them as high up as possible on the template.

I moved Fred’s picture to the right since that is where this particular template naturally leads the eye. This has the added benefit of deflecting the eye back toward the posts. He could also enhance the visual path back to the post by breaking up the text underneath using bold letters, bullets, and/or paragraphs.

I’d add a Feedburner subscribe link, or some other one that uses natural language. Yes, there is an RSS link above, but I suspect many of Fred’s readers do not know what RSS is. Might also consider a subscribe by email. I have placed the subscribe link where most people expect to find it.

As you scroll down the current blog page, there are multiple link lists. I would move some of them to static pages. This way the offerings you most want readers to see would show up in the horizontal navigation where they can see them when they arrive on your site. There is a lot of great information for readers on this site, but I don’t know how many people are discovering all that is available to them since it requires so much scrolling. There is also the problem with red links on both sides of the page. By removing a lot of the links and placing them on a static Resource page, this would help reduce how much scrolling people have to do in order to get to what they’re after.

I’d move the meta section to the bottom of the blog. Something like this is only for the author, and we know where to find it. It’s just confusing to readers who aren’t WordPress bloggers.

What else might Fred consider?

What do you notice about Fred’s blog? He’s looking for suggestions, so I’m sure he’d appreciate hearing from you. Especially if you are a first time reader, those fresh eyes can often be the most helpful.

Part 1: Your template as your visual foundation

Fred Deutsch emailed me with a Help, help, help me subject line:

Hi, I really enjoy your site and am learning a lot. I’m wondering if you
might provide me some feedback or suggestions? I started my blog for two purposes — first to communicate with constituents and educational people, and second as a sort of reference area for me to list all my favorite sites (the side bars). But now that I’ve been blogging a few months, the blog page seems congested to me — or at least not as visually inviting as I would like it to be. Do you have any suggestions?

When I started looking at Fred’s site, I noticed a couple of things. But in order to really explain it, I need a couple of posts to do it. So I hope Fred can hang on while I talk about some of the visual basics under what is going on in his blog. When we select a template, we are choosing the foundation visuals of our blogs. I’m going to talk about the template Fred has chosen in this post, and write another post on the choices he has made that affect it.

How do people read on the web?

Eye tracking studies have shown people tend to read in an F shaped pattern online. These are heatmaps, where the areas that are most looked at are red, then yellow, then blue, with the grey areas being places that the eye skips over.

Looking at these charts you can see there is a general overall pattern (the F pattern) but you can also see how there are visual elements that also pull the eye. For example, in the middle heatmap, there are arrows that point to a box on the right side.

So when design elements fall into this F pattern, it’s pretty easy for the eye to follow. If you want the eye to go in another pattern, you have to do something to get its attention.

The template underneath Fred’s blog

Fred uses a customized version of Stardust. It’s a black and white template with red accents. Red against the black and white provides a lot of contrast and the red strongly attracts the eye. There is a decorative spray of leaves that also acts to deflect the eye back toward the post.

You can see, if you remove the spray (see template below), there is nothing to stop the eye from being pulled off the right side. The links create tracks for our eyes to follow that lead our attention off the blog to the right. Now if you have a short post so there is another red calendar or a strong image inserted on the left, you may be able to pull the eye back. But how often do you write your posts to satisfy the visual need of your blog? (OK, so I might.)

What can you do to change the way the eye moves?

In this case, you can darken the color of the links on the right. That will help the brighter reds move the eye back to the post.

In order to do this you need to get into the code and change a color number on the stylesheet. It isn’t terribly difficult, but you do have to pay attention and not modify the code in any other ways. There are several steps:

1. Determine the color number of the current links so you can find it in the code
2. Determine the color number you want to change them to
3. Find the place in the CSS on the stylesheet that controls those links
4. Change the color number

Finding colors

There are many ways to do this depending on the software you have access to. I’m showing the color picker in Photoshop, since that is the image program I use. First I took the screen shot of the template I show above, then open the image in Photoshop. I used the eyedropper tool to find the red used in the template, then selected a darker version of that color. The hexidecimal color number I need for the code is in the box at the bottom of the color picker.

Changing the Stylesheet in a Wordpress blog

I installed this template on a testblog that has been updated to version 2.5.1. If you are using another version, the admin interface may look different, but the basic process is the same. Open the admin, go to the Design (used to be called Presentation) tab. Select Theme Editor, then Stylesheet. Scroll down until you find the code for the links (click on the image to see it larger and clearer type). Make the change and click update.

Doing things in unconventional ways

Now, I am certainly one to break rules, especially in design. However, I do think about when it serves me and when it doesn’t. In a blog, we have many elements competing for attention. If we can use some elements that are familiar to the general user, those elements basically stop competing. We see them, recognize them, and move on.

This blog template chooses not to use the orange RSS symbol to subscribe to the feed. Instead it uses a link labeled RSS.

Usability expert Jacob Nielson has this to say:

The first, and strongest, guideline about news feeds is to stop calling them RSS. In our study, 82% of users had no idea what this term meant. Using implementation-oriented terminology is generally a bad idea, because most users don’t understand (or care about) the underlying technology. It’s better to use terms that indicate what the concept does for users. In this case, “news feed” does this far better than “RSS.”

How do you deal with a visually noisy blog?

OK, I’ve given you my perspective, now tell me yours. What do you think about this template and the visual flow? What do you do to increase the readability of your blog from a visual perspective?

Next up: suggestions for Fred’s blog

I’ll be putting up a second post on how to de-noize (I’m going to copyright this word, so don’t steal it) a blog, using Fred’s as an example. Some of the things we’ll be looking at are the unintentional consequences of changing the template and what are people looking for when they come to your blog.

Suggestions for a visually noisy blog

I’m not leaving my usual focus on all things visual, just adding a weekly report on an online blogging project I am participating in.

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A group of bloggers from around the world have accepted the challenge to do something every day in May to become a better commenter on other blogs. Since I did another challenge last year with two of the organizers, I decided to join them. First, there are over a hundred blogs participating. The group in the last challenge was 14, so we got to know each other. It’s much harder to keep track of who is who this time. There are also networks of bloggers who have joined, and I’m noticing that it is harder to comment when it seems like all the other people in the comment string already know each other. Something to be aware of when I engage with my readers, or on blogs where I know others. What can I do to create a welcoming environment?

• Day 1- Commenting self-audit

Commenting has always been somewhat sporadic for me. In phases. I read over 150 blogs, most of which I read the majority of the posts, so that alone is a major time commitment. I find when I am short on time, I skip the commenting. I’m also noticing I gather insights across the blogs I read, often making connections between tidbits that mash up with pieces offline. So the responses I find emerging don’t make sense attached to one place.If I knew ahead of time which tidbits were going to align, I might be able to write the type of posts rich with links that Sue Waters, Michele Martin, and Beth Kanter are so brilliant at doing. I seem to have a more retroactive thought alignment process rather than the anticipatory ones others seem to have that know what they might need and bookmark it for later.

• Day 2- Comment on a new blog

This was easy. The comment challenge is full of blogs that are new to me. Since I train adults, I don’t follow K-12 blogs as a general rule, and the group has a lot of them. It’s been fun to explore them, they certainly have a different flavor. Not quite sure how to add value to the conversations on them yet. Instead I find myself telling those who are expressing anxiety about being behind that it’s OK. I guess I’m trying to find a common ground to share.

• Day 3- Set up comment tracking

Like so many other things I discover on these challenges, the tracking software is a matter of strategizing how I am going to change the patterns of how I engage with daily practices. I center my online life around Google Reader and Mail, so things that integrate easily are the ones that I can adopt quickly. I have installed both co.mment and cocomment, but certainly have not fully adapted to them. And so far, I have found the RSS feeds from these tools to be confusing. Especially with so many similar conversations occurring across multiple blogs.

• Day 4- ask a question in a comment

This is something I do with some regularity. What is interesting to me is how often bloggers ignore the questions I ask. Now I can understand if I ask another commenter a question that they may not see it. But as bloggers, we often get multiple notifications of comments. And I’m not talking just about the blogs with a huge amount of traffic. Leaves me wondering if it is the type of questions I ask, or the type of bloggers I’m asking.

• Day 5- comment on a post I don’t agree with

By far the hardest task for me. This is totally contrary to my online behavior, and has sparked some of the deepest reflection. Offline, I certainly have no problem disagreeing with others. I suspect there are people around me who would say I voice my disagreement too much. So why is it so different for me online? I still haven’t figured it out, and I still haven’t disagreed.

• Day 6 - engage with other commenters

It’s been nice to see the engagement with other commenters on the challenge. I have found it difficult to do this in the past. I read all/most of the comments on a post before I comment, and often try to engage with others. It’s almost like there are unspoken norms that develop on certain blogs. My favorites are the ones where the blogger and the readers talk freely and back and forth. I wonder what it takes to foster that norm?

• Day 7 - 3 Learnings

The three things that jump out to me from the first week:

1. Dedicated commenting takes an organized system to stay manageable
2. I really don’t like the idea of disagreeing online
3. There is a gap between what I like and what I am (not) creating on my own blog

Jabiz Raisdana left a comment on Does my header make my blog look fat?,

I would love a quick run-down on what story you think my images tell.

He has three blogs, and I think all of Jabiz’s headers are effective for a number of reasons.

Titles

Jabiz uses Intrepid in all his titles. From the Visual Thesaurus, we see words related to intrepid on the left. I would expect his headers to evoke these types of feelings.

He has three blogs.

• Intrepid Teacher
• Intrepid Flame
• Intrepid Classroom

Looking at the the lines in his headers

Here are the headers from his blogs. I have used red to identify what I see as the dominant lines in each image. Notice how these lines direct the eye to the two important areas, the posts and his sidebar. I’ve also made specific comments about the images below each example.

On Intrepid Teacher, the use of a larger boy and a smaller one walking down an alley evokes fearlessness. You don’t know what is at the end around the corner. The larger boy looks like he is being supportive to the smaller one, much like a teacher would be to a student.

On Intrepid Flame, the challis or bowl evokes a feeling of the unknown.

On Intrepid Classroom, the figures are going somewhere, but you don’t know where. They are all going together though. Much like we do in a classroom.

Interpretation of images can be very individual. Certainly affected by each of our experiences and cultural lenses. These are some of my impressions. What about you? And Jabiz, what were your intentions?

What makes these headers work?

It’s the combination of the visual and the verbal.

1. There is something about each of the images that relates to the title. So, something that evokes the quality of intrepid.
2. The dominant lines in the image guide the eye to the most important parts of the blog, the posts and the sidebar.

What else?

What do you see that you think makes a blog header effective? Any examples of headers you can point us to that are really great?