Visual Literacy
The Key to Engaging Seemingly-Disaffected Students and the Workplace Basics for Adults
At one global manufacturer’s Eastern US plant, shop floor supervisors were reporting extraordinary levels of defect – much more since the introduction of some new technology. Employees refused to address the issue, claiming labor union constraints that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. Supervisors reported attitude as poor - a dramatic change from the enthusiasm that had always characterized the organization.
The operations director hired me to design motivation training, and I went walkabout. Shop floor employees knew that defect was up and universally claimed it wasn’t their job to diagnose the problem in order to redress it. Otherwise everything was good: union/management relations, supervision, pay, raises, promotions, recognition. It was a solid place to work, and most said their employer is first rate. But the defect problem had introduced dissonance, and a cloud hung in the air.
Suspecting the problem had nothing whatever to do with attitude or motivation, I confirmed that the problem didn’t lie with materials supply and then asked to see the manuals. They were well written, and the specification diagrams were complex, finely drawn and abundant. Manuals would be the first line of recourse for diagnosing production problems so I asked supervisors whether anyone had referred to the manuals for troubleshooting instructions. They looked up and looked away; I had my answer.
It was as I suspected: the diagrams were forbidding and no one wanted to admit it, so they invoked artifice about union rules and hoped no one would ask them to actually explain how the machine operated in order to consider what might be wrong.
This wasn’t surprising. Many people do not develop visual literacy skills, and these would be required in order to see complex drawings as parts within a system. Once we’d completed training in observation and documentation, which took about three weeks and included close work on simple paper- machine design specification and also on fixing problems associated with machine operation, employees were enthusiastic about figuring out what was going wrong in production. And furthermore, several people spoke about considering improvements in the production process to improve cost-effectiveness. There were a few employees whose first language was not English; thanks to the observation and documentation work, one person among them was able to demonstrate with drawings a production process improvement that was soon implemented to good effect. In a short time the problematic defect problems were identified and rectified.
The problem was not motivation. It was embarrassment at being unable to read diagrams that were, after all, the professional purview of these employees. Once people developed the visual skills to do the job, they were enthusiastic, proud and determined to make things work.
Visual literacy, a term first coined in 1969 by John Debes, is the tendency of a human being to integrate sensory experience, discriminate and interpret aspects of the physical environment, and communicate. Visual literacy fosters verbal literacy and later in childhood, reading. The precursors to visual literacy are observation and documentation. At any time in life, training in these two capabilities can become the experience missed in childhood. Then visual literacy kicks in and develops ever greater refinements to ever greater benefit.
Unfortunately, kids who don’t have a chance to develop visual literacy may get stalled when it comes to other forms of literacy and communication. Later as adults, they may act out, as these workplace employees did. Teachers not informed about visual literacy and not trained to diagnose deficits may mistake untoward or uncooperative behavior as malicious intent, though virtually everyone would prefer to be active, engaged and learning.
As the school curriculum has focused more and more on rote learning and tests, there is ever less chance for teachers to diagnose correctly a student’s developmental stopping point, no less to preclude embarrassment and instead prescribe the right next steps. In the next post I will set out Observation and Documentation Training using everyday readily available materials virtually every teacher can employ in short order.
ends Helen Kelly January 27, 2013
The Key to Engaging Seemingly-Disaffected Students and the Workplace Basics for Adults
At one global manufacturer’s Eastern US plant, shop floor supervisors were reporting extraordinary levels of defect – much more since the introduction of some new technology. Employees refused to address the issue, claiming labor union constraints that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. Supervisors reported attitude as poor - a dramatic change from the enthusiasm that had always characterized the organization.
The operations director hired me to design motivation training, and I went walkabout. Shop floor employees knew that defect was up and universally claimed it wasn’t their job to diagnose the problem in order to redress it. Otherwise everything was good: union/management relations, supervision, pay, raises, promotions, recognition. It was a solid place to work, and most said their employer is first rate. But the defect problem had introduced dissonance, and a cloud hung in the air.
Suspecting the problem had nothing whatever to do with attitude or motivation, I confirmed that the problem didn’t lie with materials supply and then asked to see the manuals. They were well written, and the specification diagrams were complex, finely drawn and abundant. Manuals would be the first line of recourse for diagnosing production problems so I asked supervisors whether anyone had referred to the manuals for troubleshooting instructions. They looked up and looked away; I had my answer.
It was as I suspected: the diagrams were forbidding and no one wanted to admit it, so they invoked artifice about union rules and hoped no one would ask them to actually explain how the machine operated in order to consider what might be wrong.
This wasn’t surprising. Many people do not develop visual literacy skills, and these would be required in order to see complex drawings as parts within a system. Once we’d completed training in observation and documentation, which took about three weeks and included close work on simple paper- machine design specification and also on fixing problems associated with machine operation, employees were enthusiastic about figuring out what was going wrong in production. And furthermore, several people spoke about considering improvements in the production process to improve cost-effectiveness. There were a few employees whose first language was not English; thanks to the observation and documentation work, one person among them was able to demonstrate with drawings a production process improvement that was soon implemented to good effect. In a short time the problematic defect problems were identified and rectified.
The problem was not motivation. It was embarrassment at being unable to read diagrams that were, after all, the professional purview of these employees. Once people developed the visual skills to do the job, they were enthusiastic, proud and determined to make things work.
Visual literacy, a term first coined in 1969 by John Debes, is the tendency of a human being to integrate sensory experience, discriminate and interpret aspects of the physical environment, and communicate. Visual literacy fosters verbal literacy and later in childhood, reading. The precursors to visual literacy are observation and documentation. At any time in life, training in these two capabilities can become the experience missed in childhood. Then visual literacy kicks in and develops ever greater refinements to ever greater benefit.
Unfortunately, kids who don’t have a chance to develop visual literacy may get stalled when it comes to other forms of literacy and communication. Later as adults, they may act out, as these workplace employees did. Teachers not informed about visual literacy and not trained to diagnose deficits may mistake untoward or uncooperative behavior as malicious intent, though virtually everyone would prefer to be active, engaged and learning.
As the school curriculum has focused more and more on rote learning and tests, there is ever less chance for teachers to diagnose correctly a student’s developmental stopping point, no less to preclude embarrassment and instead prescribe the right next steps. In the next post I will set out Observation and Documentation Training using everyday readily available materials virtually every teacher can employ in short order.
ends Helen Kelly January 27, 2013
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