Express Your Ideas Clearly At Work More Visually

Story-telling in new ways demands new tools. To express your ideas and yourself, wouldn't it be great to get past the clunky powerpoints we so often generate at work to a whole new format? Maybe with tools like Mural.ly people who aren't designers (like me) can do more with our stories visually. Will Wright the author of SimCity, launched  Spore at PopTech in 2006 saying we all have design aspirations and that most people want to express themselves, but what they make isn't too attractive. He said what people need is the tools and computers are great tools to amplify our abilities and to help us tell stories. How true. So true I never forgot it and have looked for tools to help me and everyone I know to tell their stories better ever since.

Will said back in 2006, "The tools we surround ourselves with are an expression of our identity." It's almost non-news that we are getting those tools faster and free now-- from Pinterest to Instagram to Facebook Timelines -- we have more and more tools to express ourselves beautifully (hurrah!). Mural.ly might be something to help us tell our stories better at work. It's in beta so we'll see. If you check it out (and I think you should), take my advice and watch the videos. Sign up for the free account and watch first and then click about. I thought I could just click around and get going and I accidentally clicked on something that took me to a full screen photo of a guy staring at a wall of inter-related stuff-- straight out of the TV show Scandal or the Unibomber's shack. Clearly this tool could help detectives or conspiracy theorists, but I think the makers intend it for storytellers like you and me.I will continue to look for more tools like it and pass them on. Work presentations should all be more like Will Wright at PopTech and less like 18 pt typeface crammed into 5 bullet points a page. We'll get there.