Visual frameworks.
Visual frameworks is a deck of 100 cards to help you think creatively about a complex situation, craft a story, design a presentation, explore possibilities, and much, much more. You can use them by yourself, but also with groups, to see different points of view, share stories about your experiences, and build common ground.
I’m Dave Gray, the creator of this card deck. Over the past 30 years, I have used visual frameworks with great success in all kinds of companies and situations, from startups to the Global Fortune 500, in just about every industry you can imagine.
“Dave Gray is a visual geek and so much more. I was drawn to his work some 25 years ago, and since then I’ve collected his infographics, method cards, and books. Each time, I re-invent myself.”
Dolly Parekh, Design+Strategy+Impact Executive.
What can you do with visual frameworks?
Here are some of the ways I’ve seen them used:
- To untangle and make sense of a difficult problem.
- To think creatively about a situation.
- To think through a story, pitch, or presentation.
- To develop a strategy.
- To facilitate group creative activities in workshops and training.
- To design new products and services.
- To make it easier for customers to share their experiences and tell their stories.
- To build shared understanding and alignment within a team.
- To work through conflicts.
- To get people in therapy to open up, think differently, and gain new insights.
- To explore and improve personal relationships.
- To discover and share interesting stories about any topic.
- To flip the classroom and get students to share their stories and ideas.
- To develop conceptual frameworks and design canvases.
And I’m sure there are many, many more!
“Amazing! What a gift to us all!”
Andy Polaine, Design Leadership Coach.
Turns out they are useful in just about any situation where people need to think differently and generate new insights and ideas. They are especially useful to anyone whose professional focus is helping individuals and teams grapple with complex problems and find creative solutions, like coaches, consultants, teachers, managers, therapists, and facilitators.
“I had the visual frameworks laid out on a table at a family gathering. Without any instruction, they were immediately engaged and telling stories.”
Friederike Von Isendorff Wykes, Independent consultant, educator.
Whether you’re a business executive aiming to enhance your strategic thinking, a consultant seeking to deliver more value to your clients, or a team leader striving to improve collaboration, visual frameworks will be a valuable addition to your toolkit.
“Visual frameworks are the medium I think in, and Dave Gray finally gave me a dictionary. Thanks Dave. Keep going. You’re helping.”
Nate Jebb, Director of Business Development.
How do they work?
Stories make things happen. They are the way that we make sense of things, figure out what’s going on, decide what to do. We use stories to understand each other, to get other people on board, to build a movement, to change the world.
Put five people in a room with the cards and some simple instructions and they will quickly come up with dozens of stories to make sense of complexity and come up with creative ideas, options, and insights.
“Dave Gray’s visual frameworks are pure genius; a powerful new way to have an unconventional but insightful conversation”
Harry Max, executive player-coach, consultant, and hands-on design leader.
Visual frameworks are building blocks that make it super-fast and easy for you to create and share stories. They are like a card catalog for concepts, mental models and archetypes that already exist in your mind. The magic happens when you start playing with them, arranging and rearranging them, juxtaposing them, and putting them into sequences.
“Wide-ranging, and at the perfect fidelity for exploring different visual metaphors to communicate complex topics.”
Dave Hora, researcher and strategist.
The story is already inside you. The cards are a catalyst to help you put it together. You already think with images, stories, mental models and archetypes. They are the ”stuff of thought.” The power of visual frameworks is that they make these thoughts explicit and external, which enables you to think in ways that would be impossible if you just worked them out in your head. Laying the cards out on a table literally extends your mind into the external environment.
“Visual frameworks cut through the complexity and help students learn, and express themselves too. It’s a fabulous curation to enrich teachers’ repertoires.”
Oliver Caviglioli, author of Dual Coding for Teachers, Organizing Ideas, and Teaching Walk-Thrus.
When you make your thoughts visual and explicit, it also allows you to show your thinking to others. Your ideas are literally ”on the table” and suddenly it becomes possible to think together, to explore things with a group, that would otherwise be impossible even to think about. Researchers call this distributed cognition, which is the ability to use objects and the environment to think together.
“Amazing resource for all us visualizers and chronically whiteboard-obsessed facilitators.”
Megan Miller, Senior Director of Service Design and Facilitation.
It’s a new kind of literacy — visual literacy — the ability to use visual language, making the invisible visible, to think better, together.
If you’re a consultant, designer, or facilitator, visual frameworks are a great tool to get conversations, ideas and stories flowing. I have found that even with business people who are typically reluctant or skeptical, you can get them engaged, simply by saying something like this:
”If you had to create some slides for a presentation on [whatever you’re working on], could you tell the story using these cards, as if they were your slides?”
In addition to the 100 frameworks, the deck also comes with ten extra cards, including instructions for seven activities and exercises:
Icebreaker: To warm up a group by sparking interesting introductory conversations.
Common ground: To build shared understanding and alignment.
Reframe: To see a situation differently and generate new insights and ideas.
Daily framework: For daily reflection on your life journey.
Mix and match: To catalyze inventive thinking, discovery and innovation.
Yes/no/story: To make sense of complex situations and get unstuck.
Scenario: To explore a range of possibilities, options and alternatives.
“With sticky notes, it can be hard to know where to begin. With visual frameworks, the ideas just flow.”
Greg Storey, Airbag Industries.
Every kid is an artist. Drawing is a primary way that kids explore the world and share their experience with others. As people grow up, it’s easy to lose touch with that childlike creative power. Visual frameworks help people connect with their inner child and rekindle that creative spark.
“Just… WOW!”
Nic DiPalma, Founder and CEO, Spacetime Labs.
Why am I doing this?
I’ve used visual frameworks throughout my life. I’ve used them to start companies, sell services, build and lead teams, build deep relationships with partners and customers, and to coach people through life and work challenges. I’ve used them to write books, design and run workshops, and even to enrich my personal relationships.
“Visual frameworks, you say. A card deck, you say. Dave Gray, you say. JUST. TAKE. MY. MONEY!!
Kes Sampanthar, Thinker and Managing Director, BCG Brighthouse.
