I had an incredible opportunity to join the Steelcase Global Design team in their monthly quest for a deeper understanding of our world. Their team finds time once a month to gather and discuss topics outside the world of design; past talks have covered "the art of conversations" and experiencing a "holy moment." I chose to focus my talk on visual literacy. This can be a very broad topic, so I focused on its use in education, how humans are naturally wired to think visually, and comparisons to Reading and Writing literacy scales. To establish a few conversation starters, I put together a series of points and shared two videos - with a little help from the Heroes, of course.

1. Visual / Literacy
A discussion on the state, value and
opportunities of visual literacy in the world today.

2. Andy Van Solkema / Principal Designer / Visualhero

3. Design Research / Visual Communication / Experience Design

4. Andy Van Solkema / M-Design Candidate

5. Hypothesis / Our culture is expanded through our visual
mind and how we share thoughts and ideas. With
intentional learnings, exercises and measurement of
our visual literacy we can enable understanding,
therefore enhance cognition and the pursuit and
application of creativity.

6. Seeing

7. Senses

8. Storytelling

9. Visual storytelling

10. Gutenberg

11. Understanding

12. Understanding?

13. Understanding?

14. Cognition

15. Boundary Object

16. Boundary Object

17. Boundary Object

18. Karl Fast / Deep Interaction / UX Brighton 2012

19. Knowledge

20. The Value of Visualization

21. Information is Powerful

22. Execution and Literacy

23. Code Orange

24. You’re doing it wrong.

25. Discuss /
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What is Visual Literacy? Interactions? Images? Animations?
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How does Visual Literacy fit into our culture today?
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What happens if we leverage visual literacy in education?
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What can we learn from writing and reading literacy?
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What happens to business and culture if we acknowledge this
type of learning in our society?
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What happens to creativity and innovation?