OUR MISSION
is to nurture the next generation to be better thinkers, creators and communicators through the teaching of visual thinking strategies.
WHO WE ARE
The Picturethink team is made up of collaborators from multiple professional backgrounds, including finance, media, manufacturing, IT and education. As practitioners of visual thinking in the workplace, we have seen its effectiveness in business problem-solving, innovation and communication. We thus decided to customise programmes for children and youth to nurture their visual thinking ability from young. Picturethink is the education arm of Infiniskills – Visual Thinking, a visual thinking training and consultancy firm for businesses.
WHY WE DO
WHAT WE DO
We are passionate believers in the power of visual thinking. Visual thinking is commonly described as seeing words as a series of pictures. Because our brain process images 60,000 times faster than texts, simple drawings, diagrams and maps can be more effective than written or verbal explanations for learning.
Scientists, from Da Vinci to Alan Turing, drew out visual representations of complex ideas and inventions in their minds. We have political economist, William Playfair, to thank for inventing the first bar chart, line chart, and pie chart, giving all analysts today tools to present data more simply.
The best thinking is a combination of both verbal and visual. Children, more so that adults, can benefit from visual thinking skills for learning as their verbal and writing abilities are not well developed yet. We hope to develop young learners’ visual thinking ability to help them become better thinkers, creators and communicators of tomorrow.
Visual thinking help children do pretty amazing things such as:
THINK
Drawings can help to organise complex ideas, clarify fuzzy concepts, understand data, draw connections and make conclusions.
IMAGINE
There is no limit to our creativity when we draw new worlds, tools, services etc. that we imagine. Drawing is the first step to prototyping. We can use drawings to share our vision with others. We can draw as many variations as we like easily, without cost.
PROBLEM-SOLVE
We can break down a big problem into small parts for easier processing via visuals. Drawing the who, what, when, where, why and how of problems can help us visualise better the relationships between the parts as we explore solutions.
COMMUNICATE
Using the right visuals will make key messages we are trying to communicate more memorable and persuasive.
REMEMBER
Drawing is the best method to remember the details of object. When it comes to study and education, visual learning techniques (eg. mindmaps, graphic organisers etc) have been shown to improve everything from Reading Comprehension, Science, to long-term retention and test scores.
OUR APPROACH
Our programmes are grounded on the Science of vision as well as the visual thinking toolkits developed by Dan Roam, our Principal and author of five international bestselling books on business visualization and communication clarity. His toolkits have been adopted by numerous businesses and organisations around the world. We now show how these powerful tools have wide ranging applications for young learners as well.
We develop programmes that use visual thinking to approach all things big and small in children’s lives. Academic learning, problem-solving, innovation, life skills, communication etc.—all these can be so much more fun and easier to learn with visual thinking.
Dan Roam’s Books:
OUR TEAM
Goh Ai Yat
is the Master Trainer and Principal Course Leader in Asia for The Back of the Napkin™ – Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures for Digital Roam Inc (US). A former banker, she regularly conducts visual thinking and business skills programs for executives. She currently teaches Creativity, Innovation & Design for the RMIT University degree programme at SIM Global Education, and Creative Problem Solving at Beijing Normal University.
Joyce Chua
has taught children from toddlers to college students in her 15 years of teaching. Her specializations include English Language, Character Education and Project Work Skills. With experience as Curriculum Planning Officer at MOE HQ, Head of Character & Citizenship Education and Head of English at secondary schools, she is adept at designing effective educational programmes for both students and teachers.
Goh Ai Ying
is a certified trainer for The Back of the Napkin™, DiSC® and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. She runs workshops on entrepreneurship, retrenchment and retirement planning and has taught in Civil Service College, Singapore Institute of Management, schools and corporations. Previously, she was a trainer for financial analysis programmes with ICPAS and was actively involved in organising entrepreneurship programmes for children.
Chua Su Lynn
is ACTA-certified and passionate about using visual thinking to solve problems both at work and at home. She was formerly part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and managed the MAS Academy’s Diploma programme for graduate officers. Prior to that, she was in a business development function and her role was to encourage global financial institutions to grow their business activities in Singapore.
Join Our Newsletter
Sign up to stay updated