Description Graphical tools are visual representations of the relationships among ideas and concepts that are generated through group processes. They help to organize knowledge in a way that can be used for planning, setting priorities, consensus building, discovering key concepts, and many other uses. They are especially effective for reflective communities of practice, because they can capture the individual ideas of members, depict the community’s collective thinking on a subject or topic, and surface the patterns of ideas and concepts that are emerging.
Example One example of a graphical tool is an Affinity Diagram. Constructing one is a relatively simple, but powerful process that begins with a clear statement of a problem or issue to be explored. A community focused on creating new knowledge about what works in designing community-based technology centers (CTC’s), for example, might state an issue as, "What are the most important factors for communities to consider in starting up a CTC?" All community members would then contribute their ideas during a time-limited period of brainstorming. Once all ideas have been contributed, they are organized in groupings that express their "affinity" to one another, or how they are similar to one another. This process may go through several iterations, as various community members group and regroup the ideas. Once the group has finished the organizing process, titles or headings are attached to each grouping that represent the theme or key concept in the group of ideas. The headers may also be used to discover relationships and patterns among the affinity groups. One good source for learning more about Affinity Diagrams is the .
Approaches The following descriptions and resources will lead you to further information about a variety of graphical tools. Each approach takes a slightly different view of generating, capturing and depicting relationships and patterns among ideas.
Concept Maps were first used by Joseph D. Novak of Cornell University in the 1960s. Their origins are in the learning movement called constructivism, which asserts that we learn in social environments by creating shared meaning. Concept maps help identify the way we think, and the way we see relationships between knowledge. They are constructed by writing down major terms or concepts about a topic; identifying the most general, intermediate, and specific concepts; and then drawing the concept map. Concepts are circled and arranged with the most general concepts at the top, intermediate concepts at one level below, and specific concepts at the bottom-most level. Lines are drawn between related concepts and labeled with "linking words" to indicate how the concepts are related. Maps may be go through a number of iterations. More information about concept maps and sources of concept map software is at .
Mind Maps were invented by Tony Buzan for the purpose of organizing information based on how our minds connect ideas and concepts by association. These maps allow groups to very quickly capture their associated thoughts as they are expressed through the use of colors, pictures and symbols. Graphically, mind maps start with a key concept in the center: new ideas and associations then radiate out from the center. By presenting your thoughts and perceptions in a spatial manner and by using color and pictures, a better overview is gained and new connections can be made visible. These maps can be very creative, tending to generate new ideas and associations that have not been thought of before. More information about mind maps, examples, and references to books, websites and workshops is at .
Causal Loop Diagrams are more complex and very powerful graphical tools that come from the disclipline of systems thinking. According to Daniel Kim, one of the proponents of these methods, "Causal loop diagrams provide a language for articulating our understanding of the dynamic, interconnected nature of our world. We can think of them as sentences which are constructed by linking together key variables and indicating the causal relationships between them. By stringing together several loops, we can create a coherent story about a particular problem or issue." Their construction begins by explicitly stating a problem or theme about which the group wants to learn more. Causal loops, as the name suggests, take key variables and map their causal relationships, by linking them together with labeled arrows. Kim’s directions for creating causal loop diagrams are in an article at . John Shibley’s article about creating diagrams from stories, at , is also an excellent resource for reflective communities of practice as they surface and share their tacit knowledge through story-telling.
