Visual thinking, broadly defined, is the use and exploration of images as tools for communication, understanding, creativity, problem solving, and explanations.

Foundation. Visual thinking is founded on our ways of seeing the world. Studying visual perception, neuroscience, color theory, graphic design, media theory, visual storytelling, and information design allows visual thinking practitioners to use and create visual thinking tools built from our natural ways of understanding the visual world around us.

Visual thinking practitioners. Graphic facilitators, graphic recorders, information designers, presentation designers, innovation and creativity facilitators, trainers, teachers, communication consultants, business consultants and coaches, teachers, . . . anyone who systematically uses visual representations to teach, understand, and explain.

Visual thinking tools. There are as many visual thinking tools as there are people who use them. Every person has their own way of seeing and invariably moulds the visual thinking tool according. Common visual thinking tools include idea maps, process maps, transaction maps, flow charts, timelines, schematics, diagrams, many wonderful grids, graphic recording, sticky note clustering and arranging, whiteboard drawings, sketches, kinesthetic modeling, prototyping, and many others.

This is visual thinking and this is not visual thinking. At its core, visual thinking involves connecting people with their personal ways of seeing, understanding and explaining.