Visual thinking
by Rudolf Arnheim · first published 1969
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For those with a deeper interest in the topic, I suggest Rudolf Arnheim’s 1969 book Visual Thinking.
on “What art can teach us about the brain” ↗…first time I saw it on HN seven years ago. I have been slowly working my way through it, with some personal curation, ever since. Some of my favorites: Conscientious Objections Freedom and Culture Visual Thinking Notes on a Synthesis of Form The Character of Physical Law and anything Tufte Here is the old post, with some good discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664324
on “Alan Kay's reading list” ↗I highly recommend you read Arnheim’s 1969 book Visual Thinking, https://amzn.com/0520013786/
on “Grammar isn't merely part of language (2016)” ↗…aren’t linear verbal thinkers. It would take minutes to hours to verbalize concepts we can grasp visually/schematically in seconds. Great book on the topic: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60149558-visual-thinking
on “AI Pointer from DeepMind” ↗If you like this, you'll love the book Proofs without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking: http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-without-Words-Exercises-Classro...
on “Six Visual Proofs” ↗Visual Thinking is a great book that goes more into this. Yes it’s a spectrum and different modes of thinking are better for different tasks. The author of Visual Thinking describes 3 types: linear language thinking,…
on “Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently” ↗…layer of separation from reality. "To see things in a new light is a cognitive challenge; to adjust the language to the new insight is nothing more than a bothersome technicality." - Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking
on “Reality is a Shared Hallucination (1997)” ↗…thinkers. At the time I was part of the digital typography program within the Stanford computer science department, which built computer programs for digital typeface designers. I was also enthralled by the Visual Thinking course at Stanford, which taught engineers in the product design program how to think visually. It struck me as odd, and deeply wrong, that we were building tools for visual artists in a programming…
on “Maybe visual programming is the answer, maybe not” ↗…references: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/wsc/index.html http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/2028337238_Naomi_B_Ro... http://www.perceptualedge.com/library.php http://www.amazon.ca/Visual-Thinking-Design-Colin-Ware/dp/01... Better is subjective though and related to what you're trying to do. A lot of past research was about efficiency of information transfer. There's more recent research looking…
on “Book design inspired by Edward Tufte” ↗…children about the woman Temple Grandin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin) the book described her ability to think in pictures, and how it differed from the minds of others. It's called "visual thinking". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking I have the inner dialog myself. I've talked with my sister about it, and she says she is able to have multiple threads going at once. Like she can do mental…
on “Not everyone has an internal monologue” ↗There's a book which describes studies done on this topic [1]. I haven't read it in full, but I found it useful to know how other people have looked at this issue. [1] - https://www.amazon.in/Visual-Thinking-Mathematics-Marcus-Gia...
on “How I See Numbers” ↗> along with bad mounting instructions (they are on par with Lego, and way better than a lot of industry ones After reading Visual Thinking, I think this is a different brains problem. Some people just aren’t able to object visualize and need written step by step instructions. We tested this with my girlfriend using a LEGO set. In the time…
on “IKEA-Oriented Development” ↗…room. And unfortunately my company hasn't given everyone iPads to whiteboard together, so I think you cut out an appreciable chunk of the engineering population who are primarily visual thinkers (a la 'Visual Thinking' by Temple Grandin). 2. Junior folks flounder, unable to ramp up quickly drinking through such a thin pipe of information (a lot of which is tribal and needs to be received from the mouth of others).…
on “Tragedy of return to hostile offices” ↗