location_city Bengaluru schedule Mar 9th 03:45 - 05:15 PM IST place Mysore Hall 3 people 30 Interested

Do strong personalities dominate your development team? Are code reviews painful? Are you blindly following orders from a backlog, or are you learning from observation?

Visual Thinking Strategies, or VTS, is a cross-disciplinary technique applicable to anyone working in a collaborative setting where observation is key. VTS develops critical thinking skills by viewing and discussing works of art in a group. It is backed by over 30 years of field research showing its effectiveness and accessibility. By allowing individuals to talk about art - without needing a background in the field - VTS advances skills you can use to create more relevant products and stronger teams: Observing, Brainstorming, Speculating, Reasoning with Evidence, Cultivating a Point of View, and Revision & Elaboration.

During this interactive exercise, we’ll discuss selected works of art as a group. There are no right answers or group consensus being sought. We’re creating an environment and process for looking, thinking, reasoning and revision - skills that are mission-critical to anyone working in a software design or development role. After our group discussion, participants will learn the basics of image selection and facilitating VTS sessions within their own organizations. In addition to the above, we'll cover how VTS can help you and your team with the following: Comfort with Ambiguity, Openness to the Unfamiliar, Civil Debate, and Willingness to Participate in Group Thinking.

 
 

Outline/Structure of the Workshop

  • Introduction of VTS and brief background - 5 minutes
  • Interactive VTS session with the entire group - 60 minutes
  • Review of case studies - 10 minutes
  • Information/instruction on facilitating your own VTS sessions - 10 minutes
  • Q&A - 5 minutes

Learning Outcome

  • Understanding the history & benefits of Visual Thinking Strategies
  • First-hand experience with the VTS method
  • Basic understanding of how to facilitate VTS sessions

Target Audience

Broadly applicable to anyone working in a team - coaches, developers, designers, product managers

Slides


Video


schedule Submitted 6 years ago

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    VTS is a cross-disciplinary technique applicable to anyone working in a collaborative setting where observation is key. VTS develops critical thinking skills by viewing and discussing works of art in a group. It is backed by over 30 years of field research showing its effectiveness and accessibility. By allowing individuals to talk about art - without needing a background in the field - VTS advances skills you can use to create more relevant products and stronger teams: Observing, Brainstorming, Speculating, Reasoning with Evidence, Cultivating a Point of View, and Revision & Elaboration.

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    Participants will learn the basics of image selection and facilitating VTS sessions within their own organizations. We'll break down the various components of the technique and dig into why & how the process works. In addition to the above skills, we'll cover how VTS can help you and your team with the following: Comfort with Ambiguity, Openness to the Unfamiliar, Civil Debate, and Willingness to Participate in Group Thinking.

    I'll share some case studies with the group before we break into our first set of practice sessions where workshop participants can try their hand at leading VTS discussions. We'll then take a more detailed look the process of image selection for VTS sessions, and more advanced facilitation tools such as paraphrasing. We'll then break into smaller groups for more hands-on practice of the entire process: from choosing images to facilitating sessions.

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