Visual Thinking Workshops took place in Basel and Barcelona in 2008. These workshops were conducted to analyse the way people analyse information, and make decisions when they have to visualise information. Different advanced students and professionals involved in the process of visualising information were engaged in these workshops.
Gather information and insights from two different and opposite decision-making processes: creative and rational.
The workshops were mostly analytic-based, in which participants had to deeply analyse a short piece of information, identify and extract key words, and visualise key concepts.
A theoretical presentation was given as an introduction of the purpose of the workshop to orientate the participants.
Two groups of professionals were investigated in this study: creative and unsystematic decision-making processes (European and Latin American countries, i.e. Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Chile; Taborda, 2008), and rational and systematic decision-making processes (European countries influenced by the Swiss Design, i.e. Germany, Suitzerland, Austria).
After the a theoretical introduction given by the facilitator, participants begun analysing their texts. Each participant was given a piece of information, written instructions, answer sheets, and materials to write and draw their answers, such as markers, pencils and pens.
Once the anaytical stage was completed, participants and the facilitator analysed, examined, compared and discussed the responses.