What is a Foglifter®? A powerful tool for incorporating visual explanations in training.
Here at ThoughtForm, we work on a wide variety of communication projects. Our scope often ranges from helping companies discuss and adopt new ideas and processes, to shaping market perceptions and educating consumers. From our experiences, we have come to champion the Foglifter® for effective visual communication.
Read more about Foglifters in our Formulations Blog post “Storytelling Without Words—Why Foglifters work.”
Incorporating visual explanations into your training programs leads to a clear understanding of complex concepts. Foglifters® help learners create a clear mental image of how the pieces of a system fit together. This helps learners to see information in new ways, make connections, and thus, retain information.
Foglifters help learners
- Think about a complex topic.
- Remember complex information.
- Share what they’ve learned with other people.
Famed adult education writer, Michael Knowles, believes there are seven principles of adult learning. Using Foglifters as a foundation to a learning and development program can help learning managers and others meet these guidelines.
Adults must want to learn.
Firstly, adults are internally motivated. While some learners will read directions from step to step, others will study the image for a while, skip around the captions, and dip in and out as their interest directs. Using Foglifters in a training program allows them to explore concepts at their own pace and in their own way.
Adults will learn only what they feel they need to.
Secondly, Foglifters never include jargon or buzzwords. They get to the point, telling only the most important parts of the story.
Adults learn by doing.
Unpacking visual explanations to build meaning requires a small amount of the reader’s effort. This may be as hard a solving a puzzle or as easy as getting a joke. Either way, the deeper engagement that readers build with your message is priceless.
Adult learning focuses on problems.
Adults love goals. Foglifters focus on simplicity, making learning more efficient and allowing learners to begin applying their new knowledge faster.
Experience affects adults.
Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences. With a Foglifter, learners can see themselves and their experiences reflected in the images and have space to make connections to their own work.
Adults learn best in informal situations.
You can use Foglifters to facilitate conversations and presentations, providing context and consistent reference points to keep the dialogue focused.
Adults want guidance and consideration as equal partners in the process.
Lastly, adult learners need to feel respected. Skeptics might worry that adults will think visual explanations are “cartoon-ish,” however, most people have just the opposite reaction. They immediately sense the care and time that has gone into creating a tool to help them. This sends the message that this information is important and they are valued. So, consider adding Foglifters and visual explanations to your arsenal of training tools and help your learners think about, remember, and share what they’ve learned.
Contact us to started with a Foglifter for your business.
Marisa Boevers is the Director of Marketing at ThoughtForm. She enjoys making the world more visual, and thus easier to understand, one Foglifter at a time.