Describes how to use diagrams and drawing within a problem solving and presentation / explanation framework. This is something that bridges the gap between somewhere between Visual Explanations, Making Comics, and How to Solve It, with some dashes of Beyond Bullet Points or whatever your favorite presentation book is.

A quick read, and maybe worth it if you are stuck thinking about how to make your problem more visual for explanation, or if you have a lot of information you need to organize.

Hmm…how to review this book…somehow I expected more, but it was a worthwhile read nevertheless. Basically Dan Roam delivers a framework for sketching your way through a problem and communicating your solution. It’s not a bad framework, it makes sense – which is the problem, it’s too common-sensical :-) But I guess if people aren’t using it now, then they do need this book. Maybe because I’ve always been something of a doodler many of the ways of drawing made sense.

The most valuable part of the framework was probably the idea of using a multi-variable plot to show “why”. That’s probably one of the less intuitive + more useful points. And overall the biggest contribution of the book will probably be to get people more comfortable with the idea of using sketches in business. I think a lot of people where I work would find sketches to be “unprofessional”; this book might change their mind.

I’m still wondering how to apply the lessons of this book. Roam’s case study was useful, but very business-oriented. For me in my R&D job, the (non-obvious) applications of sketching are well…not obvious to me, even after reading this book. I guess I’ll have to think a bit harder and be more open to opportunities as they arise :-)

For me, this seemed worthy of a skim but not much more. I took notes on some of the outlined process concepts. In brief, Roam has taken the list of the “6 Ws” — a slightly different list of “Who what where…” — and mapped those to diagram types. EG: for who or what, you are drawing a portrait; for when, a timeline. He presents five different aspects one should consider in a diagram. EG: are you showing a change or how things are at the moment?. This systematic process of reflection before one begins drawing a diagram is appears quite useful.

He notes that there are many different comfort levels on using diagrams, and so if you aren’t used to simple diagrams in you meetings and communications, he has extensive explanations on how the process will enhance communication and help address the challenge of solving problems.