Visual thinking

What Hacker News says

1. SwizecMay 2026
   > It seems that if we ultimately want to "move at the speed of thought," it will require speech.

   Except for the large majority of people who read, type, and click way faster than they can talk. Especially for visual things it’s way faster to drag a rectangle than to describe what you want.

   A lot of us also aren’t linear verbal thinkers. It would take minutes to hours to verbalize concepts we can grasp visually/schematically in seconds.

   Great book on the topic: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60149558-visual-thinking

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2. SwizecAug 2023
   Visual Thinking is a great book that goes more into this.

   Yes it’s a spectrum and different modes of thinking are better for different tasks. The author of Visual Thinking describes 3 types: linear language thinking, abstract visualizer thinking (common to engineers, mathematicians etc), and object visualizer thinking (common to artists, machinists, etc). Most people can do all 3 with different levels of proficiency/comfort, but only 1 is usually the primary.

   The dichotomy I mentioned is about having or not having that inner monologue/narrator.

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3. jacobolusFeb 2017
   I highly recommend you read Arnheim’s 1969 book Visual Thinking, https://amzn.com/0520013786/
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4. msbMay 2016
   Bookmarked this list the first time I saw it on HN seven years ago. I have been slowly working my way through it, with some personal curation, ever since.

   Some of my favorites:

   Conscientious Objections

   Freedom and Culture

   Visual Thinking

   Notes on a Synthesis of Form

   The Character of Physical Law

   and anything Tufte

   Here is the old post, with some good discussion:

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664324

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5. jacobolusJun 2010
   For those with a deeper interest in the topic, I suggest Rudolf Arnheim’s 1969 book Visual Thinking.
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6. screwpermanJul 2009
   If you like this, you'll love the book Proofs without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking: http://www.amazon.com/Proofs-without-Words-Exercises-Classro...
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