Category: story article

After a decade of visualizing ideas, one key thing has made the biggest difference in my work.

Later in this article I share this secret ingredient (including my AI prompts for it). 

How to visualize ideas

There are three steps to design a visual to explain a specific idea.

1. Distill the core idea
   1. You want to clarify what you are communicating before you move towards visualizing it. 
2. Find the narrative
   1. This will be the focus of this article; how to find the narrative structure of your core idea to make it easier to visualize it. 
3. Iterate multiple times
   1. You finish by creating a series of sketches to iterate towards a visual that conveys your core idea.

Here is a step by step worksheet you can follow to guide you through the process.

Impactful visuals

Powerful visuals allow you to make complex ideas instantly digestible. They also add to what you are saying by amplifying the concept. Images that accomplish this are ‘visual explanations’. They help people easily understand the ideas you are trying to communicate. 

However, many times when people want to visualize something they default to using icons or pictures of what they are discussing. These ‘icon illustrations’ represent the topic but do not carry any explanatory strength. 

Example #1

Example #2

The secret ingredient for compelling visuals: narrative structure

Let’s unpack step 2 and why finding the narrative helps you visualize ideas. 

When you use narrative, the point you are trying to explain is revealed at the end as the morale of the story. In other words, your core idea is the insight that is revealed to conclude things. 

As a simplified example, I recently have been trying to get my two year old son to not get close to the stove when I am cooking. The core idea I am trying to teach him would look like this. 

If we stop after only filling out this one narrative element, the takeaway, we could then visualize it like this. 

Now to contrast this, let’s complete the rest of the narrative that we could tell for this core idea. The simplified story could look like this.

When explaining an idea visually, if you immerse yourself in the narrative structure connected to the idea as we have just done – the process is a lot easier. Immediately the image that comes to mind for me looks like this.

We now have an image that tells a story. With a visual such as this, even my 2 year old is able to understand it. 

Example #1

Let’s now walk through two detailed examples to further shed light on how narrative structure helps make visualizing ideas easier.

One of the main concepts from the ‘Develop learn by doing training programs’ book is apprenticeship. A while ago I had already created a visual for the concept but I wanted to create another visual that explained it further. 

With the core idea already clear, we can jump to step 2 and find the narrative structure.

Let’s use an AI prompt to generate multiple options for each of the first three narrative elements with the fourth one being the morale of the story.

AI PROMPT

“I want to use the following core idea: apprenticeship is a process of developing someone else through four stages. 1. I do. You watch. 2. I do. You help 3. You do. I help. 4. You do. I watch.

Please answer three questions related to this statement.

1. How does someone behave who does not understand this core idea? List concrete behaviors.

2. What does it look like for someone to transition from not understanding the core idea to understanding it?

3. How does someone behave who understands the core idea? List concrete behaviors.”

If we list out the top results from chatGPT it looks like this. 

1. How does someone behave who does not understand this core idea?
   • Takes over tasks instead of teaching: “It’s faster if I just do it.”
   • Expects immediate independence: Throws someone into the deep end without support or modeling.
   • Gets frustrated when others don’t ‘just get it’: Assumes competence should come without progression.
   • Skips the modeling phase: Tells people what to do but doesn’t show how to do it first.
2. What does it look like for someone to transition from not understanding the core idea to understanding it?
   • Begins modeling more deliberately: Shows rather than tells.
   • Invests time in the beginning to build independence later.
   • Reframes success: From “Did we get the task done?” to “Did this person grow?”
3. How does someone behave who understands the core idea?
   • Begins by modeling excellence: “Watch me do it while I explain why.”
   • Gives space for learning: Steps back strategically as competence grows.
   • Matches guidance to developmental stage: Doesn’t over- or under-support.

After having immersed ourselves in the narrative structure of this core idea, I would then create multiple sketches to rapidly iterate. I would stop once I found a visualization that I felt communicated the core idea well such as the following visual. 

Example #2

Now let’s walk through another detailed example.

One of the main concepts from the book, “How to be insanely productive” is rapid iteration and prototyping. A key principle related to this that I wanted to visualize was, “Use early prototypes to bring clarity to how you are framing the problem.”

Again, with the core idea already clear, we can jump to step 2 and find the narrative structure with the AI prompt. If we do, the top results from chatGPT look like this,

1. How does someone behave who does not understand this core idea?
   • Spends too much time debating or theorizing about the problem
   • Tries to define the problem entirely through abstract discussions, white boarding, or documentation.
   • Revises the problem framing late in the process when major changes are costly and disruptive.
2. What does it look like for someone to transition from not understanding the core idea to understanding it?
   • They start using prototypes as a thinking tool, not just a solution tool.
   • They recognize the value of failing early in the process instead of discovering flaws too late.
   • They gain confidence in making iterative changes based on what their prototype reveals.
3. How does someone behave who understands the core idea?
   • Welcomes early feedback, seeing it as a way to refine their problem framing.
   • Uses prototypes to clarify and adjust their understanding of the problem before committing to a solution.

Since there are many different ways I could visualize this concept, I then would take an extra step of trying to summarize the narrative. We can do this by identifying what the conflict of the story is by answering two questions,

1. What causes the tension in the story?
2. What releases the tension in the story?

For this example the tension stems from not having clarity on the problem framing early. The tension is then released when early prototypes are used to clarify the problem framing.

After having wrestled with the narrative structure we can now iterate through multiple sketches to find a visual that fits.

My first attempt looked like this

My second attempt looked like this

And my third attempt which I then refined became this visual to explain the principle: “Use early prototypes to bring clarity to how you are framing the problem.”

*this article is a potential chapter for the book, “Small stories. Huge impact.“

**To learn more about explaining ideas visually, check out Janis Ozolin’s resources and his fantastic course which I highly recommend
***Want to join the conversation around this article? Check out this post on Linkedin