Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
clarifying basic assumptions, stimulating differ-
ent perspectives, and extrapolating trends into
the future. Sketch-based annotations combine
the simplicity and immediacy of drawing with
the clarity and richness of charting. The authors
provide the rationale for this under-researched
visual management and communication practice,
illustrate it through examples, and - as their main
contribution - provide a first overview classifica-
tion of the different sketchmarks that management
groups can use in their discussion of quantitative
charts (for such contexts as strategy or project
reviews).
It seems some people do not appreciate a
visual way of presentation or even a metaphori-
cal way of presentation of an idea. For example,
when professor at the Columbia University James
Hone visualized the strength of the graphene (a
one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms packed in
a honeycomb lattice) telling, “It would take an
elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through
a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap
[cling film]” (Hudson, 2011), a columnist ridiculed
this statement in a concrete operational thinking
mode, telling how difficult it would be to get an
elephant onto a pencil, how could the elephant
balance on the tip of a pencil, and how a pencil
would puncture the elephant (Mirsky, 2011).
a thought process occurring on non-verbal level.
Due to abstracting, on a long way from generic
to meaningful, we take in those features that are
good for creating categories, and suppress those
features that are not generic (basic to comprehend-
ing it). This way we show the scissorness of the
scissors. In order to give structure and meaning to
our experience, we get rid of similarities (called
defining features) and unimportant features (vis-
ible or semantic) that are not crucial and suppress
non-basic features. Alfred Korzybski (1879-
1950) a Polish/American linguist who initiated
the movement called General Semantics drew
attention to a difference between a thing and a
word. According to Korzybski (1933/1995), lan-
guage comes between someone and the objective
world, sometimes causing the confusion between
the signifier and the signified. Because of that,
we allow language to take us up the 'ladder of
abstraction'. A Canadian/Japanese linguist and
semanticist Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (Hayakawa
& Hayakawa, 1941/1991) followed the ideas of
Alfred Korzybski and built the abstraction ladder
(S. I. Hayakawa's term) of categories, with four up
to eight levels, which could be applied to various
areas of our experience. In 1938/39 he wrote a
topic “Thought and Action” and then “Language
in Action.” The following example (Chung, 2012)
shows abstraction ladders having four levels, based
on Hayakawa's ladder of abstraction.
A Long Way from Generic to
Meaningful: Concrete and Abstract
Way of Thinking and Imaging
Level 1:
Tells about specific, identifiable nouns,
such as my blue Levi 501 jeans, Tina's
newborn sister, a three-bedroom house on
Hollis Street, African violets, Mina;
Level 2:
Identifies noun categories as more definite
groups; for example, teenagers, middle class,
clothing industry, parents, a college campus,
a newborn child, houseplants;
Level 3:
Defines noun classes as broad group
names with little specification, e.g., people,
men, women, young people, everybody, no-
body, industry, we, goals, things, television;
Recognition (just by looking) not always means
comprehension that is bound to thinking: we may
remember we have seen something before, but we
may not know what does it mean. In the process
of comprehension, we perceive the relationships
of the object to other categories, which have ir-
reducible properties (for example, knife and fork
belong to 'silverware' - it does not matter if it is
silver, green, or wooden). Images, symbols, and
words lie along a continuum from the concrete
to the highly abstract. Abstracting is considered
