Last year I stumbled upon a book called “The Back of The Napkin” by Dan Roam which is all about “visual thinking” and how to use simple drawing techniques to solve problems. I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room when I picked up a supplement of The Guardian newspaper and saw an article about the book. It looked like the kind of thing that interests me and so I rapidly followed this up by purchasing and then reading the book. I enjoyed it and dabbled with the ideas a bit but that was about it (although I did completely alter the way that I delivered my first year physics lectures as a result). Anyway, the author, Dan Roam, also has a website/blog and I always keep an eye out for interesting bits and pieces that appear on this so I was really pleased when I spotted an entry which links to a 60 minute presentation given by Dan Roam about his visual thinking techniques (here is a link that goes straight to the full presentation – to get this to work I have found that I need to click it once and wait for it to finish downloading and then click it a second time to actually watch presentation). I’ve just watched the whole presentation and it is a really nice introduction to the material covered in the book and has re-inspired me to look at these ideas some more.
Tim O'Hare 