Women, Tech and Visual Thinking
The Art of Applied Visual Thinking
The official newsletter of Applied Visual Thinking SUPERHEROES. Vol. 6 No. 10, May 9, 2025
How Women in Tech—and Visual Thinking—Light the Way
As summer draws nearer, my thoughts take me outdoors with hopes of hiking, camping and adventures. With plan-making comes shopping. One of my recent finds for camping is a portable, inflatable solar lantern that is super compact and lightweight. I love that it has a handle designed to snap around a branch, inside a tent or on a pack so it can charge while you hike.
What I just learned, however, is that this LuminAID lantern was originally designed to bring light to disaster zones. Now it brightens campsites, emergency kits, and communities without reliable electricity. Two New York graduate students, Andrea Sreshta and Anna Stork, came up with the idea in response to stories they heard about difficult and unsafe conditions in Haiti after a devastating earthquake. They took their idea to ABC's "Shark Tank" and found an investor and fan in billionaire Mark Cuban.
Women haven’t had an easy time breaking into tech fields,* but when design meets compassion, innovation shines. Solving real-world problems takes empathy and creativity. Visual thinking is a powerful ally for everyone in innovation. It helps us:
- See patterns and connections that others miss
- Communicate ideas across disciplines
- Make complex problems feel approachable
- Prototype and test quickly—before anything is built
- Systematize processes from concept to implementation
Making thinking visible can light the path to powerful, human-centered solutions. Here's how.
Some of the more common tools used to make thinking visible in order to drive innovation include product diagrams, mind maps, flowcharts and customer journey maps. These tools are useful to identify and capture problems and gaps in a given marketplace and generate creative ways to address them.
Some more unique visualization tools that can address the broader business questions or drill down to more specifics include:
- Business Model Canvas: A strategic management tool to design and communicate business models.
- Value Proposition Canvas: Zooms into customer segments and value offerings, complements the Business Model Canvas.
- User Experience (Empathy) Maps: Visualizes what users think, feel, say, and do to drive human-centered tech development.
- SCAMPER Diagrams:
Visual method for idea generation: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse
The picture above is a product diagram illustrating the features of the LuminAID lantern. We don't know for sure what techniques Andrea and Anna used to design the LuminAID lantern, but a diagram like this showcases the key benefits. To design your own invention and have some fun with wacky innovation words, check out the template linked from our 2021 article "Innovation Thingies."
The following diagram is a Value Proposition Canvas, a wonderful way to clarify how your product creates value by relieving pains and creating gains for the customer.
When it comes to technology and innovation, visual thinking is helpful at both micro and macro levels. There are tools to develop and refine your product or service and also to build, manage and communicate the business systems you need to bring your vision into reality.
For a deeper dive into innovating using some of these tools, such as product diagrams, SCAMPER diagrams and creative problem solving, register for our Applied Visual Thinking for INNOVATION online course.
*Are you a women interested in tech? Check out this helpful guide referred to us by a reader in response to our previous article about Visual Thinking for STEM, STEAM and Beyond.
https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/the-empowering-guide-for-women-in-tech/
Thanks, Isabel!
Share with a friend
