Intro to Visual Thinking Strategies

What is Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)?

VTS is a method for facilitating evidence-based, open conversations about complex, ambiguous materials. These materials could include art, poetry, designs, infographics, written documents, even code.

Benefits

Peer-reviewed research shows that engagement with VTS:

• improves observation, communication, and listening skills

• hones empathic capacities and reflective practices that promote self-awareness about one’s own thinking patterns, assumptions, and biases (metacognition)

• helps both leaders and teams navigate ambiguity and uncertainty, and supports understanding difference to improve inclusivity

• builds psychological safety, teaming, and connection to allow for improved learning, inclusion, creativity, and innovation

History

VTS was co-created by Philip Yenawine, an art museum educator, and Abigail Housen, a cognitive psychologist. Learn more about Philip and Abigail from VTS.org

They originally researched and designed VTS for museums and schools. Over the past 35+ years, the VTS method has received global acclaim for its ability to engage students, foster collaborative, inclusive dialogue, and change the way we communicate and relate to one another as human beings.

It started at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in NY (where Philip Yenawine was an art educator) as a way to support the museum’s mission:

The Museum of Modern Art connects people from around the world to the art of our time. We aspire to be a catalyst for experimentation, learning, and creativity, a gathering place for all, and a home for artists and their ideas.

MOMA was offering tours and talks, and while they were getting great reviews, they noticed that people weren’t really learning. The VTS method emerged from research by educators and researchers as a way to both engage and teach using art as a catalyst for deeper thinking.

It was soon studied and shown to be a powerful way to engage K-12 students in deep learning experiences by improving metacognition, listening to understand, and accepting multiple perspectives as possible simultaneously.

Then, higher education institutions began to employ VTS in their classrooms. It’s currently taught at Harvard Medical School to train future doctors to make better diagnoses that are based on evidence and data, rather than assumptions, stereotypes, bias, or snap judgments. And, MIT’s Sloan School of Business currently offers VTS training as a valuable business tool.

Most recently, VTS has been bringing powerful benefits to human-centered design organizations and businesses.