#42🎥 Core PM Skills - Visual Thinking and AI
How AI and visual thinking can make us better storytellers
Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog that explores ADHD, product management, and the complexities of a neurodiverse life.
In each issue, I help you navigate the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.
Part 19 of the Book of ADHD Product Management, a guide to navigating the basic principles of product management and ADHD.
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🌋Takeaways
A visual thinker processes and stores information in pictures.
A verbal thinker constructs their world through words.
Knowing the type of thinkers your partners or customers are helps you become a better storyteller.
I think one of the biggest benefits of AI is the ability to quickly change the medium of the story you’re trying to tell.
I don’t think AI is going to replace product managers. I think AI is going to accelerate how we interact with others by giving us more storytelling options.
⭐Introduction
Do you struggle to describe your product vision in words but can see the completed design in your head?
Do you “see” your solutions before you have the words to describe how you got there?
Would use images over words to convey someone your idea?
Me too. I’m Rawi and I’m a visual thinker.
I can create visual designs and photographs in my head. I cannot, however, write a newsletter without having at least 3 grammar mistakes despite using 2 AI grammar tools and reading out each newsletter before publishing.
I’m a dyslexic, visual thinking, product manager. You might be too if you’re reading this newsletter.
📐Visual Thinking
I recently finished reading Visual Thinking by acclaimed autism researcher and advocate Temple Grandin. In reading the book, I learned I’m a visual thinker. I think in pictures, while others, especially neurotypicals, are verbal thinkers.
A visual thinker processes and stores information in pictures. I see information as a visual image that I have to break down to understand as a whole. When I read a book, I often don’t remember reading words. I’m more likely to remember images, story arcs, or emotions from reading. As a dyslexic, I swap or miss, letters, words, and numbers when I read and write. Which means I’m often re-rereading text.
I cruised through high school biology class by being able to remember diagrams with a few looks. I got crushed in honors chemistry though because I struggled to remember formulas and organize the numbers and letters needed to solve problems.
A verbal thinker constructs their world through words. They have a top-down linear process in forming their thoughts and ideas. They use words to sequentially build up the idea or story they’re trying to convey.
Verbal thinkers are able to learn how to write and read and pass English classes with more than a C+. Words come to them in an orderly manner that makes sense to their brain and to the others they share it with. They don’t have to re-read the same thing 3 times and pray they remembered it properly. Their grammer is great and they spell it correctly (did you catch it?).
We need both types of thinking. We need people who can create the physical design of a new plane (visual thinker) and the person who can write the manual on how to fly it (verbal). (There are more sub-categories and nuance to this if you read the book)
Whatever you are, one style is not better than the other and we need both in the modern world.
👩🎨Yearning to see and touch
Most US schools use teaching models based on verbal thinking. The teacher talks, you listen, encode the information, and then eventually find a job in tech. Where you’ll sit in meetings listening to others all day.
If you’re lucky you get a nice diagram with meaningful information. However, most of the time you get to see someone's Excel data table they’re super proud of but, makes you die a little inside reading it. You crave a bar chart or some sort of data visualization.
You yearn for your meetings with the design or marketing team where you can look at images and flowcharts. Where your visual brain is able to take in all the information in the image at once and begin to process possible next steps.
Where you can use your power of being able to visually imagine how users might use something. Instead of staring at API documentation trying to find out if your product design is viable based on your current architecture (I’ve done this. I did not have fun).
You are a visual thinker in a sea of other visual and verbal thinkers. You wish for a solution to make your world more visual.
👩🎨Why visual versus verbal matters
Knowing the type of thinkers your partners or customers are helps you become a better storyteller. I define storytelling as the method by which you convey your ideas and thoughts to another. As a PM, a core part of the job is creating new ideas and conveying them to other teams for them to create.
If no one can or wants to understand your idea, you’ll be a very ineffective PM.
So what’s my sage product management and ADHD advice?
AI.
Kinda.
I think one of the biggest benefits of AI is the ability to quickly change the medium of the story you’re trying to tell. You’re able to change your story from verbal to visual with a few clicks of a button. You’re free to connect with your audience on how you think they’ll best receive it.
Did you have a video call meeting with a customer and want to add their feedback to a product idea?
Cool, take the recording and choose between transcribing the conversation to pure text in Otter.ai with summary analysis or creating a new product doc from it using Umbrellabird.
Need to present that data on a slide now?
Use the recording to create a sentiment analysis and visualize it as a bar chart in Tableau.
Throw all your outputs together and share them with the team with a Loom video. Or write a paper. Go nuts.
All this can be done in minutes today. This means you have all the power to tell your story in the way your audience wants to hear it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a visual or verbal thinker, AI allows you to swap your story method with a few clicks.
🎨List of tools I use for storytelling as a PM
I am not an AI expert but here are the tools I’ve been using lately. I don’t use AI to write the newsletter but I use Grammarly quite a bit to save me from my grammar mistakes.
Umbrellabird - An AI startup that transcribers user meetings into product docs at scale.
Otter.ai - A video assistant that records and transcribes meetings. I used it with mixed success because it takes up a tile space on Google Meets. I found it distracting but I know others that love it.
Google Recorder - It’s the default recording app on current Pixel Phones. I use the auto voice to text as a way to record notes to myself when I’m running or walking.
ChatGPT - I use the free one. I used the paid one but didn't find it worth the monthly costs.
Claude - Branded as a more socially conscious AI, I use it more these days because it’s free and faster.
Grammarly - A writing and punction assistant. I love this tool. It saves me every day (mostly) from grammar mistakes.
Bionic Reader - A plugin that helps people with ADHD and dyslexia read. It helps me read faster and more focused.
Loom - AI video recording and messaging.
Tableau - A data visualization tool that I have spent a lot of time using and breaking.
If you have some tools you want to share, please add them to the comments.
✨Conclusion
Learning that I was a visual thinker helped me better choose how to consume and share content. Despite my difficulties reading and writing, I do it almost every day. I really enjoy it. I also enjoy taking pictures and making videos. I’ve been able to create a library of how to story tell. Knowing how I think, helps me connect with how others think.
I don’t think AI is going to replace product managers. I think AI is going to accelerate how we interact with others by giving us more storytelling options.
🐼Want to learn more, talk to me.
⏭️Next Week
More visual thinking discussion with branding and being honest.