Over the last 2 decades, I have used visuals in all my roles as a student, an employee, and in the businesses I’ve built. I used it in my freelance design work, as a brand consultant, developing software, and in starting a successful, 7-figure video production studio, TruScribe. 

Despite these being largely creative companies, I wasn’t using visuals in the ways you might be thinking. I used visual thinking for innovation, strategy, planning, and more…it just so happens that our client-facing products and services were also visual. 

I’ve encountered countless business professionals who use visual thinking to elevate the work they do every day. They range from individual contributors to CEOs. They work in marketing startups, fast-growth tech companies, and market-leading enterprises. 

Not only do these professionals work in different industries, but they also use visual thinking in different ways. Some used it to communicate strategy to their team. Others visualized websites structures before spending time coding.

The reason I was finding people with these skills in such a variety of places is that it is often an incidental skill. None of them intentionally learned to use visual thinking, nor were they artists, it just developed out of necessity. They had each stumbled into using it in their work. 

They didn’t even call it visual thinking! But then again, neither did I until relatively recently.

It wasn’t until 2020 when I first heard the term, that I realized that all these different people were using the same skill in different ways and I want to show more people how to use it in their work.

I want to give incidental visual thinkers ways to develop these skills with intention. I also want to give professionals (even those with zero visual background) a framework to understand visual thinking and a clear path to becoming visual thinkers.

This is where the VAST Visual Thinking framework comes in. 

VAST Visual Thinking Framework

Frameworks help us arrange, filter, and see the relationships between things more quickly - and it’s no coincidence that they are often visual. So of course I needed to come up with a framework. 

There are 4 areas that visual thinkers can explore to gain skills, mindsets, and tools. These areas are:

Visual

Adaptive

Sharing

Tools

Together the 4 areas spell VAST, which is helpful in that the many ways you can be a visual thinker and the many uses for visual thinking are vast. Despite that vastness, there are basic building blocks that almost anyone can adopt, and there are more advanced skills that the most driven can opt into.

This is why I call the 4 areas of focus, the 4 paths of VAST. Each path then has levels based on a progression of these skills, mindsets, tools and time to exercise. 

There is one things I want to make clear:

I don’t expect anyone to master every level on every path.

You may not need to master any level of any path to be a great visual thinker. Some visual thinking only requires 1 level in each path. I’ll expand more on this later. 

Let’s jump into each of the paths and learn a bit more before I convey what I think is most important about this framework and why I created it. 

V is for Visual 

This path is about developing your natural drawing ability to visualize information and ideas. In my work, I focus on drawing over other forms of visual creation because of its speed and versatility. When practiced, drawing is the fastest way to create images anywhere, anytime.

Drawing is also a very natural skill for people compared to using computers and other design software. The reason visual skills are so incidental to people's work is because most people aren’t encouraged to develop their childhood drawing skills in the same way we push writing and math. We’re largely out of practice, which is why it can be daunting. 

Many people get caught up in the idea of artistry. The Visual path reflects that at a basic level, simple messy lines and shapes are good enough. But if you want to develop high-level visual skills and artistry, this path can help you get there. 

If you’re daunted by the visual part of visual thinking, don’t be. It’s only one part of what you need to be effective.

A is for Adaptive

The second path is Adaptive. It focuses on how visual thinkers approach different needs in a business. Being able to draw doesn’t help you if you don’t know what you need to draw for a given situation or conversation. Business is dynamic and often requires us to switch quickly from a 10,000ft view to action and tasks. 

When you have experience in your field, you know the language, what information is important, and how to apply it. When applying visual thinking to your work you’re largely looking for tools and frameworks that apply. But it can be important to know why you’re using those tools and frameworks and how you might apply them to other areas of your work and life. 

S is for Sharing

Visual thinking can bring a lot of value to you in your personal or solo work; speeding up learning, externalizing thoughts and ideas, prototyping plans, etc. But the benefits multiply when you use visual thinking in collaboration, whether that’s brainstorming with a colleague, gathering feedback from your team, or using it to present on stage.  

If working with others comes naturally to you, then there are ways visual thinking can make that even more rewarding. If you find collaborating, communicating, or working with others difficult, visual thinking might be a way for you to do it in a way that works for you.

T is for Tools

The fourth path is about learning the Tools of the trade. I love being able to use visual thinking anytime, anywhere, with just paper and a pen. But using the right tools for the environment is always preferred. You can’t take a whiteboard to a lunch meeting at a restaurant and paper might not be suitable for a virtual meeting. 

During the 2020-2021 pandemic lockdown, many people learned to adapt a lot of things to the virtual space. But many people I’ve spoken to tell me they have lost the ability to use a whiteboard with others. Fortunately, there are many new ways to collaborate virtually. These will be crucial for the future of business, so it’s important that we adopt them as soon as possible. 

The 5 Tool paths aren’t necessarily a progression. But they will help you find the tools and information to fit the tools to your work.

Mastering the Paths

There isn’t one way to ‘master’ visual thinking. I want you to use this framework to find the right path or paths for you. You don’t need to learn all or even most of it to be a visual thinker. You can choose how to integrate visual thinking into your work.

The 5th level of each board is often where people have put in the practice and gained the most confidence to push their style, get on stage, and lead with visual thinking. But those aren’t the majority of visual thinkers in business settings. 

Most people are using visual thinking to scratch out ideas, iterate a product prototype, tell stories, and so on.

Let me give you a better idea of what I mean.

The VAST framework is meant to help you understand and choose how you want to apply visual thinking in your work and build the skills, tools, and practices to specifically achieve it.

Ready to take the next step in your visual thinking journey? Register today for my latest course, Unlocking Visual Thinking in Your Work.