It’s time to set goals in preparation for the new year. If you’re like most people, you take whatever you accomplished this year and will increment it upward by X percent. But what if you had a way to dream bigger dreams for 2012, to set ambitious goals that would help you to get much closer to your ideal future? Here’s a simple, two-step visual method for doing just that:

1. Envision your ideal future state
2. Work backward from there to the present, “reverse engineering” the steps you need to take to get there

That’s it! Yes, it’s simple. But it works like a charm. Some of history’s greatest thinkers and business leaders have used this method to achieve phenomenal success: Henry Ford, who envisioned a car that would be inexpensive enough for the average working man to afford, or Steve Jobs, who envisioned “insanely great” products and then pushed his people and suppliers to extraordinary lengths to bring his ideas to life.

Like mind mapping, this goal-setting technique is non-linear. It forces your brain to leap out of its well-worn, comfortable, incremental paths of thinking and take a creative leap into the future. It forces you to ask yourself, “What could I accomplish or bring about if there were no limitations?” Once you know what the end goal is, you can work on identifying any barriers or limitations and making plans to eliminate or sidestep them.

So what are you waiting for? Dream big for 2012!

This diagram was created using SmartDraw 2012. To download the .SDR file used to create it, please click here.

The OmniGraffle experience starts when you first open the app. You’re greeted by a set of visual instructions that explain how to perform common tasks in OmniGraffle for the iPad. But this isn’t just a static page, but an actual OmniGraffle document. It contains several regions where you can actually try the tasks you just learned about. That’s very cool, and it’s an approach that other visually oriented app developers would do well to emulate. The main menu of the app also contains seven very attractive examples of the types of diagrams that can be created with it, which should inspire users to utilize its extensive capabilities.

Creating basic shapes in OmniGraffle for iPad

This well-designed app contains a number of sets of stencils, which you can use to quickly build professional-looking visual diagrams. Built-in stencils include Shapes, 3D Shapes, Connections, Fonts, Fills, Software, and Variables. Many third-party OmniGraffle stencils are also supported.

To add a shape to your diagram, you simply tap and hold one to select it, and then drag and drop it in the app’s workspace. From there, you can manipulate the shape’s size using drag handles. An “info” button on the app’s spartan toolbar enables you to adjust its other properties, such as fill color, border thickness, shadow and text label positioning. Each shape can have a transparent shadow which falls on objects or layers that are behind it. You can decide just how fuzzy or sharp you want the shadow to be, as well as choosing its position, color, and transparency. OmniGraffle also supports linear and radial fills, blending up to three colors with customizable centers and angles.

From this info menu, you can also modify the canvas of your diagram, including canvas size, background color, units and scale, background grid and diagram layout (or chart, mind map, diagram growth direction and separation between nodes).

This diagram layout dialog box also contains a clever “layout now” button which, when tapped, attempts to rearrange your shapes to conform to the type of diagram you have selected. I dragged 4 shapes into the workspace, selected the icon representing or chart and top-down growth direction and then tapped the “lay out now” button. OmniGraffle moved all of the shapes into a horizontal line, neatly arranged as one level of my org chart. This is a cool feature, which should be very much appreciated by new users of OmniGraffle.

Selecting and moving objects

As you would expect, you move shapes around the workspace by tapping and dragging them. What’s unique and quite welcome is that as you move a shape around the workspace, guidelines pop up to help you quickly align a shape with other adjoining shapes – both horizontally and vertically – as well as to the horizontal and vertical centers of the workspace. This is a real time saver, and eliminates the need to select several objects and then use an “align” command to make them line up properly. Snap to grid functionality and layers enable you to create more complex diagrams.

The method that this app utilizes to select multiple objects is also very clever. You simply tap and hold your finger on the screen adjacent to one of the shapes you want to select. A blue star-like pattern appears on the canvas, beneath your finger tip. When you drag your finger, a selection box follows its direction, enabling you to select multiple adjacent objects — very cool!

The drawing menu

Within the drawing menu, you can add text to a shape, connect shapes, tap and drag to create different sized shapes and create freehand shapes. This two-tiered menu keeps the main menu simple, while a single tap gives you immediate access to the app’s more advanced tools. In other words, if you’re just starting out with OmniGraffle, you can accomplish most common tasks using only the Main menu. However, if you want to have more finite control over your drawings, you simply open the drawing menu to reveal additional options. In my opinion, this is excellent user interface design.

To add text to a shape you simply tap the text button in the toolbar, then a shape or the canvas; you can also double tap a shape to add text to it. From the info menu, You can adjust text label properties, including size, font, color and style (bold, italic or underlined).

To connect shapes, you select the connector line button from the drawing toolbar and then drag your finger between two shapes. The program intelligently connects them. Even if you start dragging the line from within the shape, it still snaps to its outside edge. This intelligent behavior means that you do not need to be very accurate when you tap and drag to start the line, thankfully. You can also create unattached lines and can use drag handles to adjust the endpoints of your line or add a mid-point to it. In addition, you can add a label to a line, which opens up a whole range of possibilities in terms of cause and effect diagrams, concept mapping and more.

The “make a shape” button lets you tap and drag to create shapes of any size; the context menu is used to change the default shape. A freehand drawing button gives you the freedom to create more complex hand-drawn shapes. If you drag a line roughly in a circle until you form a closed loop, the app treats that as an enclosed object, to which you can then add a fill color. I’m not sure how practical the free-hand drawing mode is, because it’s almost impossible to draw a straight line by dragging your finger.

Thankfully, this app also contains an “undo” command, which makes it easy to recover from any design mistakes you may make.

Add tables to your diagrams

Surprisingly, OmniGraffle for iPad even lets you create tables. To do this, you first select a group of adjacent shapes. Next, you touch and hold your selection, then release. The context menu that appears contains a “more” command, which gives you access to the “make table” command. The app automatically groups and arranges your shapes to create a table. The table has one column and as many rows as the shapes of your original selection. For example, if you had three shapes selected, you will end up with one column and three rows.

To add more rows and columns, you simply use drag handles on the right and bottom edges of the shapes. I tried this with three rounded rectangles, and found it very easy to create a table out of them, and then to use the drag handles (which look like miniature tables themselves) to add rows and columns to it. This is a very clever way to handle this functionality!

Adding images to your diagram

In OmniGraffle for the iPad, images behave in much the same way as shapes. You can add many of the same properties to them, such as a stroke or a shadow. An image sub-menu within the info menu enables you to control the image layout (natural size, stretch the image to fill the shape or tile the image within the shape) and opacity. I tried this with one of the images I have stored on my iPad, and found the results to be very cool. By default, the photo I selected filled the rounded rectangle I selected. This is an excellent way to add visual impact to your diagrams. For example, you could place an image of yourself along with your contact information in one corner of your diagram. This feature opens up a lot of possibilities!

Selection and styles dialog box speeds changes

OmniGraffle’s main menu also contains a “selection and style” command, which enables you to view all of the objects that make up your document, and the styles that have been applied to them. A set of buttons at the top of the dialog box enable you to select objects by layer or by a linear list. A second set of buttons at the bottom enables you to show or hide objects by type (lines and connectors, stroke style, fill style, shadow style and font style). These sophisticated tools enable you to select a a group of objects with the same properties and make batched changes to them. For example, this dialog box told me that my document contained two rounded rectangles. Clicking on that type of object in the dialogue automatically selected both shapes in my diagram.

This dialog box is also used to view objects by layer, and to drag and drop objects from one layer to another.

Geometry settings: An even finer level of control

For an iPad app, OmniGraffle contains an amazing depth of features. Using a geometry sub-menu within the info menu, you can even make changes to object properties such as position, size and rotation. You can also select a “lock aspect ratio” setting, which if it is turned on, proportionally changes both dimensions of an object size as you drag it to resize it. These are capabilities you would expect to find in a desktop drawing program, not an iPad app!

Importing and exporting files

OmniGraffle for iPad can import OmniGraffle for Mac files via Apple’s Mobile.me iDisk or WebDAV. You can also export your OmniGraffle document to these two services or iTunes, copy your document as an image to paste elsewhere, send it to the photo gallery on your iPad or AirPrint it. You can also e-mail it as an OmniGraffle file, PDF or PNG image file. Lots of options here! My one disappointment is that there isn’t a version of OmniGraffle for Windows, and I don’t own a Mac. I’d love to see how well a diagram created on the iPad holds up when opened in the Mac version of the program.

Conclusion

if you are visually oriented person and like to sketch or diagram your ideas, you will find OmniGraffle for iPad to be a worthy creative companion. If you’ve never created business diagrams before, this app is the perfect tool to help you get started. Its developers have obviously spent a lot of time anticipating how users will interact with their app, and have come up with some very clever solutions to give OmniGraffle for iPad exceptional usability. Omni Group, the developers of this app, have succeeded in creating a powerful yet easy-to-use tool that should surprise and delight you and should be an excellent complement to OmniGraffle for the Mac.

You can obtain this excellent app in the AppStore for US$49.99 – a bit expensive as apps go, but I think its incredible functionality justifies its price. For more information about OmniGraffle for iPad, please visit the product page on the Omni Group website.

In the book, Sibbett shares a number of ways of sharing these visual outputs with others in print and digitally. While he is talking mainly about hand-drawn charts, diagrams and visual maps, these strategies also apply to mind maps used to capture the ideas and decisions from meetings:

In print

• Simple photocopies of key charts and diagrams
• Full color digital prints that capture the diagrams in a larger-sized format, such as 11 x 17 inches
• Annotated reports, in which you add titles and captions to charts to create a chronology of the meeting
• Picture books, in which you add images and explanatory text to the charts to tell the full story of the meeting

Online sharing

• Photograph the key charts, diagrams and maps generated during the meeting, process them to reduce their size and resolution to reduce their file sizes and then e-mail them to the meeting participants as JPG images. Sibbett says this is fast and easy way to communicate a quick post-meeting summary to all of the meeting participants.
• Combine key charts and diagrams in a PDF document
• Insert JPG images of key charts and diagrams into a PowerPoint presentation, add captions to them and share them with meeting participants via e-mail
• Post images in an online site that everyone can access; be sure to create smaller and larger versions of each chart, so participants can view thumbnail images of each diagram, but also click on them to view a larger, higher-resolution version
• Upload large files to a secure file sharing website (such as box.net) and then provide meeting participants with its URL and user names and passwords where they can download them.
• Reference key charts and diagrams in web meetings – in other words, share the results of the meeting via web conference, and display the visual outputs of the meeting on screen

Other tips for sharing visual materials

• Format your charts and diagrams so that they can be divided into easily readable sections. Don’t overwhelm them with a massive mind map in which the outermost topics are formatted in 5 point type that is barely readable without a magnifying glass!
• If you’re sharing your meeting output online, be sure to leverage the ability to link your meeting participants and others with additional resources. For example, you can format regions of images with “hot spots” so that when someone clicks on them, their web browser opens a specific web page. This enables people to view a high-level presentation of your meeting’s output, while others who want more detail can easily “drill down” into supporting documents and resources. Smart! Another option, enabled by newer types of graphic software, is to embed “popovers” that display ancillary information if you mouse over a specific region of your diagram.

Isn’t this a lot of work? Yes, but it’s a worthwhile investment in the future effectiveness of the team: “It does take time to do all this, but having the material in visual form is part of what supports productivity and group memory over time,” Sibbett acknowledges.

Help people understand the context

One critical point that really resonated with me is this: The charts and diagrams you’re sharing mean a lot to the people who participated, because they can look at these visuals and understand the meaning and context behind them. However, if you plan to share the visual output of your meeting with others who were not in your meeting, they lack this context.

To overcome this challenge, Sibbett offers a very clever solution: Produce a report in which diagrams and their text explanations are formatted on facing pages. “That way you get the best of both text-based and graphic representations,” he explains.

I think this is a simply brilliant solution to a very common problem.

If you’re wondering what the world looks like beyond mind mapping, Sibbett’s book is an excellent guide to visual thinking techniques. Why not pick up a copy of Visual Meetings today?

All that changed in January when I took a new job as marketing manager for a small safety training products firm. My first major project has been to help this company to launch an ambitious, multi-faceted training curriculum to the mining industry. Based on a blended learning model, it incorporates web-based training modules, a PC-based simulator, and a variety of on-the-job training tools for trainers and trainees. It can also include a learning management system and several other elements.

The bottom line? This is a complex product. Obviously, it would take a mind-numbing volume of words to adequately describe how all of the pieces worked together to provide a powerful training solution. How could we communicate it quickly and simply to prospective customers?

Being a visual kinda guy, I realized almost immediately that one of the best ways to do that would be to create a visual that showed how all of these elements work together to provide a complete training solution. Using SmartDraw 2010, I created a series of diagrams that became awesome talking points with my boss, as we worked our way through successive iterations and came closer to a complete and accurate representation of the training curriculum.

Here’s what I learned about SmartDraw 2010 in the process of working with it during the past two-and-a-half months:

• It is intuitive and easy to use; all of its functions behaved as I would expect them to, and there were no ugly surprises.
• It makes great use of right-click commands, so you can accomplish common tasks without mousing over to the ribbon toolbar.
• The set of templates in SmartDraw 2010 is very impressive, and more importantly, very useful. You can easily take one of them and use it as a starting point for your own diagram.
• The straightforward, well-designed set of diagramming tools in this program made it easy for me to quickly create some compelling, great-looking diagrams that got incorporated into a number of planning documents, and could also be given to our developers and designers, to incorporate directly into sales brochures and web pages – or to inspire them to create something more polished and colorful in Adobe Illustrator.

The bottom line is that SmartDraw 10 has helped to make me look good to my new employer. I think they appreciate the fact that I’m able to think and represent my ideas visually – thanks to this excellent program.

The book is structured into three main sections: part one is an introduction to diagramming, part two focuses on applying core diagrams and part three focuses on managing information, theory and pitfalls.  The author opens part one with an overview of business diagramming and its applications, including these common business needs:

• Problem solving
• Producing ideas
• Writing reports
• Understanding a process
• Working in groups
• Mining for knowledge

Craig provides some compelling theories that help to explain why it is a potent tool for executives challenged by complex business issues. He also explains at a high level what some of the core applications of business diagramming are. I found this part of Thinking Visually to be fascinating, because it gave me a deeper appreciation of how business needs and challenges are different today, and how visual diagramming can be used to address them. This section of the book also contains a chapter on drawing, reading and interpreting diagrams, including common lines and shapes used in business diagrams and their function.

Part two of Thinking Visually takes an application focused approach to diagramming, concentrating on six key areas:

• Mapping the business: the system map, the mind map
• Relationship and influence: relationship diagram, tree diagram, influence diagram
• Control in business: input-output diagram, control diagram
• Thinking about causation: multiple cause diagram, fishbone diagram, sign diagram
• Diagramming for change: force field diagram, window diagram
• Thinking about flow: flow diagram, the algorithm diagram (which diagrams flow as a series of questions and yes/no responses), ring diagram

Part three of Thinking Visually contains a wealth of practical advice on how to use the diagrams to manage information overload. Craig correctly points out that one of the major challenges businesspeople face today is how to separate meaningful information from a mountain of inputs, research and data. He points out that most businesses don’t make good use of available knowledge, and suggests that business diagramming can help us to do so more effectively.

Conclusion

When I picked up Thinking Visually, I was expecting something dense and theoretical, but found Craig’s writing style to be highly accessible and informative, and over 60 illustrations add an important visual dimension to this important book.

I like the fact that Craig doesn’t attempt to position visual thinking and business diagramming as a panacea for all of the challenges that businesses face. He actually devotes a chapter to eliminating some of the pitfalls of diagramming, and coaches the reader on how to avoid them.

If your work involves process mapping, innovation or any use of visual aid depicting knowledge, information or data, then I highly recommend that you read this book!

Buy Thinking Visually from Amazon.com

SmartDraw.com has just launched SmartDraw 2009, a new version of its popular diagramming and mapping software that features a wealth of improvements – including the ability to animate or “sequence” your diagrams when exporting them to PowerPoint, and several new mind mapping enhancements.

What is sequencing and how does it work?

Sequencing in SmartDraw 2009 is the ability to reveal parts of your diagram, one mouse click at a time, so as not to overwhelm your audience. For example, sequencing could be used to display each quadrant of a 2×2 matrix and its contents, one at a time, in much the same way as you can control how individual text and image elements are transitioned into a PowerPoint slide.

This new functionality is available via a new PowerPoint tab in the SmartDraw 2009 ribbon toolbar. Many types of diagrams in SmartDraw 2009 are “pre-sequenced” so they will display their contents in the most advantageous way possible when you export them to PowerPoint. You can also manually tweak what appears at each step in your diagram’s sequencing by selecting a “frame” number from a drop-down list and then manually editing your diagram’s content in that step of the animation. The “what’s new” page on the SmartDraw website contains a brief video demonstration that clearly depicts how this works. It looks very simple and intuitive to work with.

Enhanced mind mapping capabilities

For a number of years, SmartDraw has been able to create rudimentary mind maps. With each new version, the developer has added new capabilities to create this type of diagram, and SmartDraw 2009 is no exception. The upgrade page contains a video that shows how these new capabilities work:

Automatic styling: This new capability, which can be toggled on and off, automatically alters the size and shape of topics to correspond to the level they are within a map. For example, let’s say you drag and drop a sub-topic from the fourth to the second level of your mind map. The topic’s shape, color and font style changes to match the style of other second-level topics.

Promote and demote commands: The mind map dialog box in SmartDraw 2009 now includes buttons that enable you to promote and demote topics within your map, one level up or down.

Show and hide detail: Topics which have sub-topics now display an icon. Clicking on it collapses the levels below it. This is pretty rudimentary functionality for most mind mapping programs. I’m surprised it took SmartDraw this long to add it to this program.

Export to outline: Another new button in the mind map dialog box exports your map to a text (.txt) format, with topics indented based on their level within your mind map. SmartDraw says this makes it easy to share your map with others – but actually it only shares the information that you have gathered and organized. I’m still not sure if you can actually export a mind map in other formats. I’ll have to take a closer look at this when I receive a copy of the program from the developer.

Other new features

While sequencing is the most important new feature in SmartDraw 2009, it’s not the only one. Here is a summary of some of the other new and improved capabilities of this robust diagramming program:

• Smarter flowcharts: You can now insert split paths in your flowcharts (where one step in a process splits into 2 or more sub-processes) with a single mouse click.
• Enhancements to project management charts: SmartDraw 2009 enables you to insert dependencies into Gantt charts, group tasks, add milestones and assign resources to tasks.
• Smarter organizational charts: Similar to the functionality in a mind map, you can now click an icon to hide or show branches within your organizational charts.
• 3D charts: SmartDraw’s bar and area charts can now be rendered in 3D, a big plus for presenting data in business presentations.

Conclusion

From what I can see, SmartDraw 2009 looks like a worthy upgrade to this powerful diagramming program. I hope to get a copy to play around with soon, and I’ll let you know what I think. I wasn’t that impressed with SmartDraw 2008, and the way its new diagram wizard tied my hands behind my back. Hopefully this new version has corrected that!