Visual Frameworks
A pattern language to clarify thinking, discover options, and align faster.
Abstract
Visual frameworks are simple, sketchable mental models you can combine like building blocks to clarify thinking, surface patterns, and build shared understanding. In this session we’ll practice spotting patterns, choosing a framework that fits the moment, and remixing index-card–scale sketches into full visual explanations. You’ll learn how to keep drawings intentionally sketchy to invite participation, use ambiguity to explore adjacent possibilities, and move from quick scans to aligned decisions.
Speaker Bio
Dave Gray
Dave Gray describes himself as a possibilitarian. He helps people and teams realize their creative potential through visual thinking, design, and facilitation. He founded XPLANE, a pioneering visual thinking company, and is the author of several influential books, including Gamestorming (with Sunni Brown), The Connected Company, and Liminal Thinking. After selling XPLANE in 2022, he turned his focus to big life questions—how to make a living while creating a life—through Visual Frameworks and his School of the Possible.
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Session Summary
With the Visual Frameworks concept, Dave explores the connection between visual tools, mental models, and problem‑solving. Dave defines visual frameworks as an “amazing goldmine of visual ideas” that act as an index card catalog for the mind's vast “mental library” of models.
Key Ideas: The Foundation of Mental Models
The foundational insight: everything we think and do is based on models. A model is a largely unconscious, automatic construct we use to process the continuous stream of unique situations in life, driven by our need to understand, predict, influence, and control our environment.
Every new situation is instantly compared to past experiences, forming a preliminary model. All models are partial and imperfect; the only perfect model of anything is the thing itself. That imperfection enables thinking and communication, yet when we feel stuck or confused it's often because our current model is insufficient for the situation.
The Role of Visual Frameworks and Metaphor
Progress, problem-solving, and learning are a search for better models. Visual frameworks evoke known models to offer fresh perspectives on a situation.
Dave distinguishes model from metaphor: a metaphor compares two models—the one describing the current situation and a contrasting one from experience (e.g., “The world is a stage”). Each comparison reveals some aspects while hiding others. By cycling through frameworks, individuals and groups can break habitual thinking.
Key Insight: Finding the Right Model
A bank's IT department struggled with cost overruns until a team member reframed the problem using roles like “chef” or “sea captain,” leading to the Restaurant Model.
- The Problem Model: Projects behaved like a custom restaurant—customers described a bespoke meal, IT wrote a “grocery list,” bought custom software, and built from scratch, driving high costs and long timelines.
- The Solution Model: Create a menu of standard, pre-priced services for repeatable requests, leaving only ~10% for custom work.
This shows that once the right model is found, the solution often becomes obvious.
Application and Collaborative Use
In an interactive “fortune telling” demo, participants used frameworks to explore a real problem (e.g., “How do you communicate expertise to a lay audience without dumbing it down?”).
The exercise helps make the invisible visible. Selecting cards like Gap, Juggling, Crossroads, and Zoom In/Zoom Out clustered thinking around two dimensions:
- The Feeling Dimension: The emotional reality (the “chasm” of the communication gap, the stress of “juggling,” the tension at a “crossroads”).
- The Thinking Dimension: A communication strategy (e.g., “Zoom In/Zoom Out” to explain complex work by showing the intricate detail of a single “snowflake”).
For groups, spread the cards and collaboratively eliminate those that don't fit to rapidly focus on relevant perspectives.
Ultimately, while words divide, pictures connect (attributed to Otto Neurath). Dave encourages starting with his collection and developing a personal set of models, since every culture and individual carries unique frameworks shaped by experience.