Business Analysis Through Visual Drawing

dataxsys Non-Tech

In this article we emphasize business analysis through visual thinking and the power it can add to anyone’s project and in their job. 

So, first of all we have to understand what visual thinking is and how it can impact our daily project and then I explain the importance of visual thinking on our overall project.  After reading this you start getting an idea on how you can implement it on your day to day routine.

Visual thinking is not a new concept but it’s been ignored by about 90% of entire people working on a project. Drawing scope of the project in a visual form helps us to understand the concept and helps us to visualize long convoluted data in a simple way.

One good thing about visual thinking is it doesn’t need any prior experience. Definitely, we don’t need to know how to draw as long as we have basic knowledge of shapes. There are a lot of apps available such as FiftyThree’s app called Paper and their stylus called Pencil, that can help us to easily draw on our Ipad or cell phone to communicate with our audience.

What is Business Analysis Visual drawing

Business analysis visual drawing is a method where we can organize the thoughts that we have in the shape of bar charts, pie charts, and any other drawings so that we can understand the scope of a project clearly.

It helps communicate and message our idea in a fast and efficient way. Also the cool thing is that we don’t have to choose professional software to draw visual drawing. I think a simple app or a paper is enough. 

Why Visual Drawing is important

The concept of visual drawing in any project is really not about being creative, attractive, perfect, or stylized rather it’s more about understanding the concept. These are four things which i believe visual drawing can help us:

1.      It increases the number of ideas that we have.

2.      It helps to create more prototypes and ideas.

3.      It helps us to decode more complex ideas. So, if we try to visualize a certain topic from different views, these rough doodles will really help and increase our understanding.

4.      It increases our ability to communicate.

Most of the time it happens that traditional tools like Excel & PowerPoint don’t allow us to explain meeting notes or stories in a better way. No doubt! That these tools eventually sabotage the entire project but initially it’s OK to ignore them.  When you’re using words, a lot of times your idea might not come across and show a complete picture of your understanding but when you use visuals combined with words then the result will be great. Things tend to really click with people and you start noticing other people’s contribution to overall discussion.

We’ve got visual storytelling where we’re engaging an audience with our analytical process and our message that we want to communicate which will ultimately influence them a little bit more than just communicating that verbally.

Another very important aspect of drawing visually is that you will be amazed at how it will engage people to talk about their product and you start getting feedback quickly.

People invent new types of data visualizations regularly and if they are really effective at communicating your idea, then other people will start trying it out too.

Fact about Visual skills

About 90 percent of the people I worked with, maybe even more, lack this skill of functional drawing, so with all of these hundred people. Maybe ten out of those are really comfortable or at least brave enough to draw their ideas and show them as a communication tool.

Big reason that people feel uncomfortable drawing is in work environment. We’ve been given tools like PowerPoint or Excel which are great to some degree, but they’ve really limited our visual vocabulary to the library of Chevrons and pyramids and cycles that you can choose from. So, rather than really think about is this the best way to visualize an idea, many people go into the library and PowerPoint or the chart types in Excel and they limit themselves to what’s available to them within that tool set. I think that’s something that people need to get more comfortable with working first outside of PowerPoint and then finding the right visual once they’ve determined what it is on pen and paper.

Conclusion:

My goal in this article is to demonstrate the importance of visual thinking, how important it is and how it can help as a team to understand complicated concepts easily.

The concept or myth out there that you are born an artist is simply not true. Visual thinkers are actually helping to solve convoluted projects and to better focus, participate and digest the information.

I will tell you and in the words of Dan Roam, whoever draws the best picture wins has really proven to be true, I never had the best idea and just the one who stands up and draws my own and a lot of times that’s what gets people moving in the direction that I suggest.

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