Visual Thinking

There has been no shortage of definitions of the concept of “critical thinking” over the years and the concept has been subject to much detailed scholarly work. In social and educational terms critical thinking is an important topic. Of late, critical thinking has also been widely discussed in the popular media, and the concept has been regarded as one of the most important graduate outcomes expected of a university education. However, despite this, scholars have yet to arrive at a holistic conception of critical thinking—a model of critical thinking as it were—that might usefully underpin the range of considerations about critical thinking that occur in the higher education literature. This paper: (1) reviews the various definitions and approaches to critical thinking, and (2) incorporates them into a single, coherent model. A number
of disagreements in critical thinking scholarship are outlined as ‘axis disputes’ arising from the proposed model.

Systems thinking is considered a much-needed competence to deal better with an increasingly interlinked and complex world. The many streams within systems science have diversified perspectives, theories and methods, but have also complicated the field as a whole. This makes it difficult to understand and master the field. Short introductions to fundamental questions of systems science are rare. This paper is divided into three parts and aims to do the following: (1) to provide a broad overview of the structure and purpose of systems science; (2) to present a set of key systems principles and relate them to theoretical streams; and (3) to describe aspects of systems-oriented methodologies within a general process cycle. Integrative visualizations have been included to highlight the relationships between concepts, perspectives and systems thinkers. Several new attempts have been made to define and organize system concepts and streams in order to provide greater overall coherence and easier understanding.

Visual narratives, such as comics and animations, are becoming increasingly popular as a tool for science education and communication. Combining the benefits of visualization with powerful metaphors and character-driven narratives, comics have the potential to make scientific subjects more accessible and engaging for a wider audience. While many authors have experimented with this medium, empirical research on the effects of visual narratives in science communication remains scarce. This review summarizes the available evidence across disciplines, highlighting the cognitive mechanisms that may underlie the effects of visual narratives. Abstract Public engagement with science and

Research on the aesthetics of organisations, conducted for several decades, has led to organisations being no longer regarded as aesthetically neutral entities, but as forms of expression, susceptible to several aspects of human perception, interpretation and reaction. This approach can be of particular importance for supporting creativity, innovativeness, knowledge conversion, and for critical reflection on the theory of management and managerial practice. In order to take full advantage of the potential of this cognitive perspective, one should turn to applied practices (e.g. the work of designers and artists) combined with theory (of perception, design or art), which have thus far remained beyond the purview of mainstream organisation and management theory.

The article presents and discusses an observational approach to drawing, where the objective is to articulate some features of visual perception implicated in and by the drawing process. Besides drawing, the author recorded such investigation through an action camera placed in front of his eyes and simultaneously recorded his spoken comment on the activity. The camera became the principle motif of the drawing, along with observation of certain operative biological features of perception, especially binocularity and peripheral vision. The article reflects on a first drawing involving three layers that simultaneously generated three videos and monologues. A second drawing was then developed from a more knowing stance, based on the considerations raised by the first drawing. Of such considerations, these were principally the question of timeframe, framing of experience, procrastination and doubt and, as it were, disengaged focus. The theoretical bases of the latter were founded in part on the author's existing knowledge brought to the first drawing, and in part explored in the second drawing through what reflection on the article's question had raised during its development. While the spoken monologues were intended to shed light on the objective of the drawings, consideration is given to how they also shaped the drawings. Sections of the monologues as transcripts are shown in relation to video screenshots and discussed for their contribution to the drawings. The article concludes with lists of key points extracted from the multi-faceted process concerning perception and observation respectively.

Shimojima and Katagiri have demonstrated that diagrams reduce “inferential load” during reasoning by scaffolding visual-spatial aspects of memory. In response, we wondered why, if this is true, that proofs are usually text based? The purpose of this paper is to explore ergonomic affordances of text that may encourage its use in the communication of proofs by building on prior work in attention. We claim that textual notations may focus a reasoner’s “spotlight” of attention through serialized sequential chunks, whereas many diagrams may “diffuse” attention and that a diagrammatic notation system that serialized information in chunks amenable to focused attention could leverage the power of textual notations. We present such an example through a case study focused on generalized constraint diagrams, a visual logic with attributes that may support focused attention and extract ergonomic principles that may transcend each notation system.

This paper describes how bodily positions and gestures were used to teach argument diagramming to a student who cannot see. After listening to short argumentative passages with a screen reader, the student had to state the conclusion while touching his belly button. When stating a premise, he had to touch one of his shoulders. Premises lending independent support to a conclusion were thus diagrammed by a V-shaped gesture, each shoulder proposition going straight to the conclusion. Premises lending dependent support were diagrammed by a T-shaped gesture, the shoulder premises meeting at the collar bone before moving down to the belly button. Arguments involving two pairs of entailments were diagrammed by an I-shaped gesture, going from the collar bone to a mid-way conclusion above the abdomen before travelling to the final conclusion at the belly button. The student’s strong performance suggests that placing propositions at different locations on the body and uniting them with gestures can help one discern correct argumentative structures.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has been integrated as an educational tool in the late 1950’s and the beginnings of 1960’s. Many research and conceptual papers over the past decades have documented its importance on enhancing students’ education and learning across all subject areas and grade levels. Our twenty-first century modern life is dominated by ICT, yet education has not been able to use ICT as an enabler and tool to foster effective learning fully. Concept mapping and visual learning software is a graphical application used to show and represent the relationship and connections among concepts. This study reviews the literature on the application of Inspiration software, a concept mapping tool that has been used with more than 25 million users worldwide. The study investigates the opinions of undergraduate students at Kuwait University (KU), their perceptions and willingness, for using concept mapping software to aid in learning. The study examines and identifies the usefulness of the application on students’ learning and thinking. It also provides valuable contribution regarding the level of awareness, utilization, satisfaction, and difficulties faced by the uses of concept mapping software at KU. Furthermore, it explores beliefs of undergraduate students concerning the usefulness of this type of software on students’ learning and thinking process. Findings of this research provide a profile and reference for policy and decision makers as well as professionals, working in the field of education and at the Ministry of Education and Higher Learning, regarding the integration of concept mapping and visual learning application software into education.

Penelitian ini  bertujuan untuk: (1) mendeskripsikan keefektifan perangkat pembelajaran yang dikembangkan menggunakan model pembelajaran Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) (2) mendeskripsikan peningkatan kemampuan berpikir visual siswa yang diajar dengan perangkat pembelajaran yang dikembangkan dengan menggunakan model pembelajaran Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL). Jenis penelitian yang digunakan adalah penelitian pengembangan yang mengacu pada model Thiagarajan, Semmel dan Semmel yaitu model 4-D (define, design, develop dan disseminate). Subjek penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas IX-4 pada uji coba I dan siswa kelas IX-5 pada uji coba II SMP Negeri 2 Medan. Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan adalah lembar penilaian RPP dan LKS untuk mengukur kevalidan, tes kemampuan berpikir visual, angket respon siswa dan lembar observasi keterlaksanaan pembelajaran. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa: kualitas kevalidan perangkat pembelajaran memenuhi kriteria valid berdasarkan skor rata-rata RPP yaitu 4,25 dari skor maksimal 5,00 dengan kriteria baik dan skor rata-rata LKS yaitu 4,18 dari skor maksimal 5,00 dengan kriteria baik; perangkat pembelajaran yang dikembangkan telah memenuhi kriteria keefektifan dengan: a) ketuntasan belajar secara klasikal telah melebihi batas minimal dan mengalami peningkatan yaitu pada uji coba I sebesar 60% dan pada uji coba II meningkat menjadi sebesar 86,6%, b) ketercapaian indikator/ketuntasan tujuan pembelajaran  telah  tercapai untuk setiap indikator  pada uji coba II. Pada uji coba I ketercapaian indikator adalah sebesar 70,2% meningkat menjadi 81,6% pada uji coba II, c) Respon siswa positif dilihat dari skor rata-rata angket respon siswa 3,95 dari maksimal 5,00 pada uji coba I dan 4,0 dari 5,00 pada uji coba II. d) waktu pembelajaran tidak melebihi pembelajaran biasa yaitu waktu sama dengan pembelajaran biasa pada uji coba I dan uji coba II, (e) keterlaksanaan kegiatan pembelajaran yaitu 88,75% pada uji coba I dan 93,25% pada uji coba II; kemampuan berpikir visual siswa mengalami peningkatan yaitu pada uji coba I pada uji coba I sebesar 68 meningkat sebesar 11 menjadi 79.

Kata kunci : pengembangan, perangkat pembelajaran, contextual teaching and learning, kemampuan berpikir visual.

Sketching is understood as a key factor for creative expression, one the most effective visual thinking tools and so applied for design. Is considered the principal approach by which design engineers externalize their concepts and where the drawings provide visual clues for refinement and revision. Engineering Design researchers as well as professionals agrees the value of sketching to enhance visual thinking and so creativity, but sketching presence in engineering education is so few.

There is a decrease in class hours for graphical subjects in current engineering curricula. Moreover, these even pays more attention to metric geometry and CAD training, and so sketching practice is almost totally displaced by modern computer-aided tools. Our appreciation is that sketching is not valued as a powerful visual thinking tool and seen as an old drawing method, replaced by new computer drafting interfaces. We studied how sketching is valued at engineering schools by students and educators, about their opinions related on the importance of sketching, how they see as a creative tool and how they apply for courses, for teaching and for learning.

It is very important that engineering colleges give students the value of sketching, as well of foster its use, to train the future design engineer “not only in the standard drafting skills, but additionally in the ability to represent concepts that are more abstract and best represented as sketches”. To foster creative problem solving, engineering schools should offer formal courses in sketching and drawing in support of design projects: teaching basic techniques in freehand sketching would help them generate quicker and more effective external visualizations of their ideas, and thus foster their creativity.

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge where the most significant scientific breakthroughs take place in the 21st century. They are significant both for the development of convergent technologies and for the dissemination of interdisciplinary and integrative trends in research that connect areas previously thought of as completely incompatible, including natural sciences and the humanities. The author shows that in cognitive science,
despite the highly theorized and narrowly special focus of many its areas of research, visual images are quite often and productively used. Some of them, such as cognitive map, cognitive niche, cognitive landscape, cognitive field that echoes the concept of dynamic field in Gestalt psychology, the wandering around the field of meanings, search tree are discussed in the article. A special role is also played by mental imagery, which form a basis for the work of productive imagination and creative thinking, studied in cognitive psychology. It is substantiated in the article that such visualization tools are essential not only as initial “scaffolding” for the development of theoretical concepts, but also for clarifying the nuances of the meaning of complex scientific onstructions. In addition, in today’s cognitive science, the phenomenological approach and the so-called “first-person methodology” are gaining popularity, taking into account that the meaning of theoretical constructions begins to live and work, being unpacked in the lifeworld of each particular personality. Thus, the inseparability of figurative visual knowledge and abstract verbal knowledge gets additional justification through the understanding of the inseparability of the ordinary and scientific knowledge.

Graphic Signs of Authority in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages presents a cultural history of graphic signs and examines how they were employed to communicate secular and divine authority in the late antique Mediterranean and early medieval Europe. Visual materials such as the sign of the cross, christograms, monograms, and other such devices, are examined against the backdrop of the cultural, religious, and socio-political transition from the late Graeco-Roman world to that of medieval Europe.

This monograph is a synthetic study of graphic visual evidence from a wide range of material media that have rarely been studied collectively, including various mass-produced items and unique objects of art, architectural monuments and epigraphic inscriptions, as well as manuscripts and charters. This study promises to provide a timely reference tool for historians, art historians, archaeologists, epigraphists, manuscript scholars, and numismatists.

Ce livre propose une interprétation inédite de la biologie d’Aristote. Il montre que, dans la démarche aristotélicienne, à côté de la pensée discursive, oeuvre une pensée visuelle qui élabore une représentation de l’organisation spatiale du corps vivant, apportant ainsi une contribution décisive à la définition des deux tâches majeures de l’enquête scientifique aristotélicienne: l’explication causale et la détermination des genres.

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Dieser Dissertation liegt die Problematik des impliziten verkörperten Wissens im Erkennen und Entdecken mittels visueller Instrumente zu Grunde. Mit Entdeckung ist der Akt des allerersten Erkennens von etwas gemeint, über dessen Existenz oder Beschaffenheit dem Entdecker zuvor keine expliziten Kenntnisse zur Verfügung standen. Eine zentrale These dieser Arbeit besagt, dass dies durch den transmodalen Charakter der empirischen Begriffsbildung gesichert wird. Dieses erkenntnistheoretische Problem wird anhand des Entdeckens von emergenten Mustern urbaner Organisation ausgearbeitet, die aus der Vogelperspektive auf urbanen Echtzeitkarten erscheinen. In der Arbeit werden Trends interaktiver Kartierung aufgezeigt, bei denen unter anderem urbane Sensordaten, Daten aus der Verortung von Personen, Objekten und Information und anwendergenerierte Informationen visualisiert werden. Die Konklusion beinhaltet Ausblicke, an welchen Punkten die anhand der interaktiven Karten gewonnenen Erkenntnisse in Stadtentwicklungsprojekte und in die Entwicklung von ortssensitiven Technologien einfließen können.

This dissertation elaborates on the role of implicit embodied knowledge in recognition and discovery through the use of visual instruments. Discovery refers to the very first act of recognition of something, that''s existence or features were not explicitly known by the discovering person beforehand. According to a central thesis of this work discovery is enabled by the transmodal character of empirical concept formation. This epistemological question is elaborated based on the case of emergent patterns of urban organization that appear on urban real-time maps from the bird''s eye view. Trends of interactive mapping are shown where urban sensor-data, location data of persons, objects, and information, as well as user generated information is visualized. The conclusion contains outlooks how knowledge gained from interactive urban maps can be utilized in urban development projects and in the development of location sensitive technologies.

Why are Geometric Proofs (Usually) “Non-Visual”? We asked this question as a way to explore the similarities and differences between diagrams and text (visual thinking versus language thinking). Traditional text-based proofs are considered (by many to be) more rigorous than diagrams alone. In this paper we focus on human perceptual-cognitive characteristics that may encourage textual modes for proofs because of the ergonomic affordances of text relative to diagrams. We sug- gest that visual-spatial perception of physical objects, where an object is perceived with greater acuity through foveal vision rather than peripheral vision, is similar to attention navigating a conceptual visual-spatial structure. We suggest that at- tention has foveal-like and peripheral-like characteristics and that textual modes appeal to what we refer to here as foveal-focal attention, an extension of prior work in focused attention.

Frameworks for designing interactive products and systems.
1. SKETCHING – beyond craft to design – the importance of alternatives.
2. INTERACTION – do? feel? know? Products, computers and networks.
3. DESIGN – motivation, meaning, modes, mappings.
4. PARADIGMS – brain, tool, media, life, vehicle, clothes.

... Sketches are an essential designer’s tool for capturing preliminary observations and ideas. If they are fluent and flexible they support creativity. Sketches can be concrete or abstract, representational or symbolic, loose or tight, improvisational or rehearsed.

This study analyzed three different remote sketching paradigms to find recommendations for future remote multidisciplinary co-design systems. These included virtual reality freeform drawing, tablet drawing, and uploading images of paper drawing. Drawing in VR could potentially be useful for convergent ideation and visualizing designs that require large-scale spatial thinking or human-scale interaction. The tablet was shown to be easy to use and applicable for a wide variety of design scenarios and paper showed strength in divergent or sequential ideation. The results indicate that perception of media might affect the use of digital tools-this difference in perception was shown between disciplines. Notably, users of VR for collaboration might need more time to explore and develop skills since the medium is so new. The results of this study contribute to further understanding of how digital media can affect the design process when communication between stakeholders needs to be remote.

This paper presents research results that aid in understanding how photography can become a tool for iterative thinking as a mode of reflection. The research was conducted in three phases. The first consisted of a specific task: after reading assigned materials from different sources, PhD students had to take a photograph as a visual reading-report. In the second phase, all the created images were presented and discussed during class. In the last stage, the students talked about their experience through in-depth interviews. The findings showed that visual awareness linked observation and reflection at the same time, since the students were continually looking for ordinary objects to carry new meanings that were relatable to specific arguments and ideas expressed in the reading materials. Hence, visual awareness is understood in this paper as a mode of visual perception that enables a process of thinking iteratively about a particular topic. The photographic camera was identified as a thinking tool that could be a valuable device to incorporate into educational activities. Finally, in addition to practicing iterative thinking, students expressed feeling engaged and motivated, enjoying this activity, and embracing the challenge.

In this article we would like to draw attention to the cognitive potential hidden in an image and in the art which employs it. We will focus on the visualization of basic mathematical objects e.g. irrational numbers. Our starting point will be the easy and intuitive case of the square root of two, as it is observed in the diagonal of a square. Next we will move over to the golden ratio hidden in a regular pentagon. To visualize this irrational number φ we will use a looped, endless animation. Finally, we will have a closer look at the famous number π and we will suggest an attempt to represent it in a clearly visual way.  In the last section of the article we will consider the possibility of representing rational and irrational real numbers by dimensionless points on a straight line.  We will also try to present a straight line on a flat surface which – as we know has length – but has no width. The above issues will enable us to see the extent to which mathematics may be inspirational for art, as well as how art may familiarize us with mathematical issues and explain them.

The principal aim of this paper is to discuss data integration issues in the context of urban scale studies. A special attention is dedicated to built environment, visual thinking and synthesis of knowledge. The paper is based on literature studies, professional experience and the outcomes of an experimental students' project conducted by the author last year.First, the theoretical background and the current state of research in the area is revealed. Then, the project theme, goals and organisation are described. So, the main idea of the experiment was to explore data collection methods at the urban scale without a design goal since the prime approach was to take into consideration students' perceptions of space and its multifaceted aspects. Thus, to maintain an open mind about gathering such information and not to bias participants towards one approach or another were crucial. Finally, the outcomes of the project are discussed. Students' presentations showed that they used different approaches not only in terms of digital tools but also in terms of their understanding of data integration.

People commonly sketch externalizations on paper and whiteboards as part of their everyday thinking processes. While common, this practice is little understood, particularly as it may relate to digital visual representation (such as information visualization) and sketch-based interaction. My research aims to better understand these thinking sketches from the perspective of information visualization and pen-and-touch interaction and to apply this understanding to the design of interfaces that can better support complex and freeform everyday thinking practices.