This is where visualization of problems or scenarios as envisioned by NVAC ‘s ” visual analytics” may prove remarkably helpful as visuals activate a ” kaleidiscopic range of brain processing” ( about 1/3 of the population are primarly visual, nonverbal, problem solvers but I would wager only a tiny minority of IC analysts are). Simply framing the known differently can, by itself, be a spur to creative or critical thought and the speed of comprehension with a visual far exceeds any verbal brief. Or even reading text. A picture being worth a thousand words is apparently true in terms of cognitive neuroscience. Howard Gardner’s theories evidently have something for spies as well as school children.

A few caveats are in order.

As visualization can be powerful, visuals can be powerfully wrong if the underlying analytics are less well considered than the effort going into constructing elegant visualizations ( the image point where commanding a high level attention intersects with conveying high level of added meaning). We don’t want stovepiped errors to become more persuasive, we want visualization to disaggregate stovepiped errors before they get going, by causing analysts to say ” Hey…on second thought….”.

On the flip side, I’m not sure having these “visual analytics” developed exclusively by engineers and scientists at NVAC is the smartest way to go. Engineers, who while strongly spatial are also notoriously linear and bifurcative in their thinking styles and their favored imagery is likely to be, I expect, unduly rigid compared to the actual world in which we live. Sometimes concepts or scenarios are alinear and are best conveyed by ambiguity and paradox and the input of actual artists whose processing may be more intuitive and actively visual might give the data an entirely different, possibly better, spin.

UPDATE:

Gunnar Peterson of the highly regarded 1 Raindrop blog stopped by to direct our attention to juiceanalytics. Thanks Gunnar !

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