Copyright: 2008
Publisher: Portfolio
ISBN: 978-1-59184-199-9
This book is a quick read but Dan Roam has packed an incredible amount of information into a small package in The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. This book presents an excellent overview of data visualization and communication. Roam presents it as a new way to "think" about problems which is an interesting concept, but I found his ideas on communication more relevant for me. The book has a little bit of "business fad" feel to it and I suspect the author would like to start a cottage industry around his <6><6> concept (otherwise why would you come up with such a name?!) but there is no doubt that the author did his homework and there is depth to the ideas he presents.
Overview
In a nutshell, this book can be summed up in the four steps of Look, See, Imagine and Show.
Looking is the act of gathering the information that is available.
Seeing is making some sense of that information as well as culling out the irrelevant information.
Imagining is "seeing" in your mind's eye missing pieces of information that can lead to a solution.
Showing is simply taking the same tools you used to see in the first place and turning them around to help others see what you are seeing in your mind's eye.
An example of some of the insight that Roam provides is his distinction between looking and seeing. He points out that Looking is collecting. Seeing is selecting and identifying patterns. Good seeing is problem recognition. The book is chock full of succinct characterizations such as this that make it a delight to read.
SQVID and the Six Questions
At the core of visual thinking are two concepts that make up a matrix that Roam calls The Visual Thinking Codex. Odd name aside, the table is a useful way of identifying quickly the right way to "see" and then "show" a problem.
The two concepts are something Roam calls SQVID and <6><6>. They are essentially two different ways of looking at problems.
SQVID is an acronym for:
- S - Simple or Elaboratee
- Q - Quality or Quantity
- V - Vision or Executions
- I - Individual characteristics or Comparison
- D - Delta (Change) or Status Quo (State)
<6><6> is the term that Roam uses for the six questions you should ask:
- Who / What? (Portrait)
- How much? (Chart)
- Where? (Map)
- When? (Timeline)
- How? (Flowchart)
- Why? (Multi-variable plot)
Flying by the Seat of Your Pants
An interesting story that Roam uses is about Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Commander Neil Armstrong was very much a "by the numbers" kind of astronaut. He believed in flying by the numbers that the computers showed him rather than by his gut feelings. All of that changed just before touch-down on the moon when he realized their planned landing site was littered with large boulders. He effectively "stomped on the gas" and had to fly by the seat of his pants with the last remaining fuel they had for the descent.
Mary Cummings who runs MIT's Humans and Automations lab wants to make sure that doesn't happen next time we go to the moon! She and her team are developing a system called VAVI (Vertical Altitude and Velocity Indicator). This system effectively merges the by-the-numbers flying experience with the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experience into a visual display. The idea is to layer multiple numeric visual inputs into a rapidly perceived qualitative display.
Usually visual displays are better at showing qualitative data while numerical displays are better at displaying numerical data. The ability to combine these two, the qualitative and the quantitative is important to be give quick, accurate feedback to consumers of that data.
Conclusion
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a good introduction to data visualization and communication skills. Roam also gives business people an excellent way of wading through the vast pool of "visual charts and tools" that are available in modern business software. His tools can help us quickly locate the right tool for the job and then effectively use that tool to solve the problem at hand.