"Back of the Napkin" Business Visualizations

Found this very interesting blog called "The Back of the Napkin" by Dan Roam, which is same name of a book published by Dan on the importance of simple visualizations that are typically diagramed on the back of a napkin which can often times spawn new industries. One good example he provides is the simple triangle diagram developed on a back of a napkin by the founders of Southwest Airlines.

He talks about this in the video below:



This kind of "prototyping" of ideas in a simple hand drawn format is nothing new or novel, as I can cite numerous instances of "white boarding" that my colleagues and I engage in during meetings to flesh out complex ideas that cannot be described in words, and needs a diagram to flesh out.

In project management, using yellow sticky notes to lay out your initial schedule is (or should be) a common practice to build the initial WBS with your team members, so that you can re-arrange the stickies until it starts to makes sense before you formally build the schedule out in some software scheduling tool.

But as in all things in life, it may seem common sense but you sometimes forget and people such as Dan Roam pointing it out to you is a good reminder. Also not bad for individuals like himself to publish a book on it and get lucrative consulting gigs explaining it!