Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures

I was very glad to have been able to get this in time for the 2010 New Year holiday.It took me about 7 hours to work through the book, split over two days.I found the workshop-in-a-book format very appropriate to the material.Each "day" of the workshop is split into a morning and afternoon sections and that makes for nice-sized learning chunks.Although  The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures  was published first, and I read it first, I would recommend starting with this book. The Back of the Napkin goes into more depth about why the techniques work. This book's "hands on" workshop format gets you involved -doing- by having you practice the techniques. It is something you really need to do as well as read about.If you aren't sure that simple pictures, as advocated in both of Dan's books, can be effective, take a look at his drawings explaining the current US health-care situation, linked from: [...]While the level of drawing skill needed is very low, what you'll probably find is that you need to work through drawings as you are working through your understanding of your problems. Simple doesn't mean Easy, but the difficulty here is not the drawing, it is working through whatever your problem is.My only complaint about the book is that it could use a few more blank pages.I did the exercises in a separate notebook; I had a number of "do overs" and there just weren't going to be enough blank pages for that.

This is a great book that may not be valued for every people.The thing is that persons are visual, auditive or kinesic. That is, some people would prefer verbal communication, and others empirical emotions (to live things), rather than to visual communication (graphics, illustrations and presentations).However, for our business world, where democracy is a common and difficult practice, where many people want to express their points of view, and with restrictions such as time, I think the advice given by this book is really valuable.The main idea is to synthesize, and to achieve this, the first step is to do the effort of understand first what we want to communicate. The rest is drawing.Either you are a consultant or a manager, communication is absolutely necessary. Therefore, findind a simple way to clarify ideas and portratit then in a compelling yet easy way, is a great added value of this book.A NOTE: it needs a lot of practice, but you'll learn. I've been doing this for more than 10 years and many times I still find if difficult to simplify ideas, but I always use this kind of methodology. The books gives you great practical recommendations!

Dan Roam is really cool; I really enjoyed this book. Yes, the pictures are kind of corny. Yes, the examples are kind of cartoonish. Yes, the exercises seem like they are from kindergarten. But somehow Roam has taken corny, cartoonish, kindergarten tasks and turned them into something really useful.I read this book and enjoyed it, but I didn't get the full value of the content until I went back and worked the exercises. Though I don't remember what SQVID stands for or any of the other organizing schemes that Roam uses, I really did learn something from his very original presentation of simple visual thinking tools.In the process of working through the exercises in the book, I distilled the complexities of my work into four intuitive pictographs. My boss at the time hated these pictographs for some reason, but the value of the pictographs was demonstrated conclusively a few weeks later. I was presenting an overview of our processes and methods to a group of visitors from Turkey. Although they all spoke English as a second language, all of the text-based materials fell flat. The lightbulbs of understanding lit up all around the room when the discussion turned to those four silly pictographs though.Unfolding the Napkin is a quick, fun, and useful read.

If you don't rate this book 5-stars then I am afraid you really don't understand it. I have been waiting for Roam to write this book and it is finally here. I have obviously read his first book and I always said that I needed more examples, specifically in relation to the "look," "see," "imagine" and "show" metaphor and when I got the book and saw that he had done exactly that -- well, it was amazing. My only issue now is when and how am I going to meet this guy? I use his book (The Back of The Napkin) in my information architecture college course, it's great to get students to fall into "visual data" ala Tufte. I hope I haven't offended anyone, just my opinion.

I really enjoyed the authors first and third book. The ideas are simple and almost common sense. Useful for those who find it difficult to see options, sell ideas, or present data in simple form. The author provides a membership web site with videos if you find the contents of his books too complicated. For this reason alone. I am giving just 3 stars. If the author can't get his point across in a book and by using what he teaches, there is a problem. Maybe it is greed. Maybe, he needs 3 books to get the point across. Maybe what he is teaching isn't as easy, usable or workable as the author wants us to believe? The books are good, but according to the author courses, seminars and online video subscriptions are needed in order to understand how to use simple drawings.

Dan Roam has followed up his excellent book, "The Back of the Napkin" with this book. I found that the book provides great ways to apply his great ideas by using hands-on exercises. I now feel that I have internalized the ideas. Clearly Mr. Roam practices what he preaches and makes his approach very accessible. These ideas work!I recently created a "map" to explain a highly conceptual idea. When I showed it to a friend who works in the same line of business he said that it really helped clarify things. This week he called me to say that he drew a quick version of it with a customer and the customer told him that is exactly what they needed.

I loved this!As someone who is interested in communication it was fascinating to see that Dan had created a system that could show so much information so clearly and what a massive impact it had on comprehension.It gave me confidence to express myself more creatively should I wish.

I must say I loved the first book... But this book is a complete copy... 75% of this was in the first book... Just buy the first book, nothing extra worthwhile in the one!

Arrived on time, well packed, useful book as a reference, lots of good ideas and will be a good reference for many years to come.

Superb book. Written with easy to follow clarity

fantastic book