Editor’s note: Editor’s note: Sunni Brown owns an information design firm and is a speaker and co-author of “GameStorming: A Playbook for Rule-breakers, Innovators and Changemakers.” She was recently named on Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business List and on the 10 Most Creative People on Twitter list. She spoke at the TED 2011 conference in Long Beach, California.

(CNN) – Humans have been doodling in snow, in sand and on cave walls for more than 30,000 years.

George Washington, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and Vladimir Nabokov were doodlers. Bill Gates and Frank Gehry are among today’s active doodlers.

Yet most of us haven’t reflected on why we feel compelled to draw.

In fact, many parts of our society — including businesses, schools and colleges — frown on doodling and consider it a waste of time. While we can’t overcome cultural biases overnight, we can certainly ask a relevant question: Why is doodling so universal? What is doodling doing for us?

Virginia Scofield, an immunologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, knows from personal and professional experience what doodling does. After struggling with organic chemistry in college, she decided to try doodling the complexities of the subject rather than memorizing them from the textbook. Scofield happened upon what native doodlers have known for a long time: Doodling can improve cognitive performance. Because of her success in transforming her own learning process, Scofield incorporated doodling and visual note-taking into her university classroom for more than two decades, and she told me it notably improved the success rate of her students.

Scofield is not the only one who’s learned to be impressed by the Doodle. Jackie Andrade, a professor at the University of Plymouth,published a study finding a 29 percent increase in information retention gained by doodlers. She noted that, contrary to popular belief, doodling seems to prevent people from losing focus on boring or complex subject matter. It gives learners who may otherwise mentally check out an opportunity to check back in.

Other researchers exploring the impact of doodling and drawing have come to equally significant conclusions about this deceptively simple act. A recent article in Science argued that drawing in science education caters to individual learning preferences and motivates students to engage and explore content in a more meaningful way. And classroom research shows that not only do learners better understand concepts through simple drawing, but it sets the stage for innovative and divergent ways of thinking. For a nation with an ego wounded by our decreased scores on the Torrance Creativity Test, this unfettered access to creative thinking shouldn’t be underestimated.

Just ask Google, the only company on record with an official Chief Doodler on the payroll. Google’s culture is well known for its 80/20 “innovation time off” rule. And for many employees, that time is spent using simple visual language to doodle, sketch and prototype new business opportunities. Indeed, many companies seeking an edge are looking to applications of hand-drawn visual language as a prospective lifeboat. In a hyper-competitive marketplace, thinkers need all the mojo they can muster.

To the throngs of doodlers around the world, this evidence is likely just the beginning of our gentle “I told you so” moments. Learning that accommodates more than text-based or verbal information amplifies the effects of cognition and creativity. And when the Science article suggested that drawing should be recognized along with reading, writing and speaking as a key element in education, it was a hallelujah moment for doodlers around the world.

I’m one of them. I use doodling for a variety of reasons: I use it to get clarity around a concept, I use it to relax, I use it to communicate ideas with others and get their refinement of them, I use it to map complex systems for companies, I use it to run innovation games for business, I use it to get insight on something puzzling me.

See some examples of how doodles are used

So how do you get better at doodling? It’s a delightfully easy task. Learners can start with the Visual Alphabet, a series of six flows—the point, line, arc, angle, spiral and loop, and the six forms—the oval, eye, triangle, rectangle, house and cloud. With these 12 “letters,” prospective doodlers can articulate any visual representation of any concept they can imagine. All it takes is a commitment to learning this language, native to our brain’s visual cortex, and applying it to challenges either at work or at school. Rather than talking in circles about a complex subject, try doodling it using words and pictures. Show your teachers and colleagues another way to see information. The insights and aha moments will arrive naturally in the process.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Sunni Brown.

Many of you know that Dave Gray and I are hosting a Gamestorming workshop at Duarte Design in July of this year. But did you also know you can get a sneak peek into the content? I spent about about 45 hours designing the curriculum and about 15 hours designing the slides to accompany it. (Dear Sunni, have you ever heard of overkill?) Alas, designing workshops is hard work! When people are spending money on a workshop you offer, one must take into consideration the following things: BEGINNER’S MIND, OBJECTIVES, CONTENT, FLOW/TIMING, SCRIPT, NUMBER OF LEARNERS, LEARNER’S JOB CONTEXT, LOGISTICS AND MATERIALS.) That’s a lot of juice. If you’re interested in seeing the general flow of the workshop in visual form, click here or on the image above. And if you’re interested in learning more about the workshop and registration, click here. Until then, may you be surrounded by flip charts, sticky notes and Mr. Sketchies, designing a world of your dreams.

I had a surprise client turn into a favorite client recently, namely ViaTech Global Publishing. Kurt Heusner, the CMO, tracked me down like many of my clients – through the semantic web – and together we planned a really successful session for 75 of their top team members. I met with Kurt before Gamestorming was published and, because our planning continued after the book was released, we had the opportunity to design the 2.5-day meeting specifically around the participatory work in the book. We used techniques like The 5 Whys, The Blind Side, and Empathy Mapping and I gave the group a short talk on Best Practices for Presentations (you can click on the image above to see the five practices I chose). At the end of the retreat each team gave a storyboarded presentation as a sales pitch for ViaTech and the visual thinking the group did the two days prior was intensive. Kurt and I both got fantastic feedback from the employees (the visual and participatory work was, for me, almost magical to witness) and everyone got a copy of Gamestorming. I’m telling you, folks, if you really do want problem-solving and innovation to occur, you’ll do no harm to dive into visual thinking meeting techniques. They give you, as I’ve witnessed dozens and dozens of times, productivity on steroids. See David Sibbet’s recent book, Visual Meetings, for more proof positive. Until next time, game on.

For those of you who are aware of the Ignite presentation format, I probably don’t have to tell you how nerve-wracking it is. 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide and you have zero control of the slide transitions. Hello. My worst nightmare as a presenter. To top off the format challenge, this particular Ignite presentation on The Doodle Revolution was done at O’Reilly’s Foo Camp, quite possibly the brainiest gathering of brainiacal brainiacs on the West Coast. So, you know, no pressure. I prepared for weeks for the shortest presentation of my career. I got through it and rather enjoyed it, so I hope you will too. Play the video above to witness the public beginning of The Doodle Revolution.

I was planning to write up a description of Foo Camp 2010 myself, but I decided to be more time-savvy and just use the content from Wikipedia, below. Suffice it to say that it was an honor to be invited and a pleasure to present The Doodle Revolution to such a stellar audience. Some highlights from my experience include (as I mentioned), presenting on the topic above, bonding with author Scott Berkun who, seemingly impossibly, is even more likable in person, meeting June Cohen, Executive Producer of the TED Conference and finally, drinking bourbon with my editor, Colleen Wheeler who – poor thing – was probably relying on bourbon to get her through the last edits of Gamestorming, which comes out in July. Colleen, you are amazing. I will send a non-alcoholic present your way very soon.

FYI, reader, Foo Camp is an annual hacker unconference hosted by publisher O’Reilly Media. O’Reilly describes it as “the wiki of conferences”, where the program is developed by the attendees at the event, using big whiteboard schedule templates that can be rewritten or overwritten by attendees to optimize the schedule. The goal of the event is to reach out to new people who will increase the company’s intelligence about new technologies, and to create opportunities for cross-fertilization between people and technologies that are on the O’Reilly radar. Some have described it as a meta-birds-of-a-feather session, that gets smart people together to discuss technology issues. [Added by Sunni:] During the event, people camp out in actual tents – not something I expected to do in the desert heat of Sebastopol, CA. But for this crowd, it ended up being worth it. Thank you, O’Reilly, for being a publisher that defies tradition and instead focuses on innovation. Nice work.

On my way to Wimberley a couple of months ago, I got a call from Derek Woodgate. He was on the planning team for TEDx UT and I assumed he was going to ask me for speaker recommendations, since our team had just produced TEDx Austin and we had a long list of incredible possible presenters. You can imagine my surprise then, when he said that the committee wanted me to be one of the speakers. I mean – I’m good – but I wasn’t sure if I was TEDx good. However, never one to miss an opportunity, I said yes and then hung up and had to roll down my window to get some fresh air. Speaking in front of academicians and graduate students about visuals and the brain opens yourself up to all sorts of criticism about your empirical data. But I’m Ms. Brown. Risk never stopped me before. So, like all good girl scouts, I did a lot of homework, prepared for weeks, and custom-doodled my slides so the audience would have fun and learn at the same time. I think they did and I think I did justice to the TED brand. Once I get the digital video, you can see for yourself.

The presentation above was created in conjunction with H2O Partners, an agency founded by Jo Ann Howard, FEMA’s former Federal Insurance Administrator.  H2O Partners specializes in the planning and management of national disasters and has a challenging message to communicate in a highly politicized field. So a simple but memorable presentation was important for two reasons: the first is that national disasters have widespread consequences and the second is that much of those consequences could be mitigated if people understood who’s responsible for what, when. H2O did an incredible job of creating the metaphor and the script for this “disaster drama” and my role was to produce a presentation that is visually compelling for any age and that gives H2O the flexibility to adapt the script for different audiences. You can view the presentation on Flickr by clicking on the image above, or you can click here to see it on SlideShare. H2O will present the visual case for disaster prevention and mitigation to numerous audiences, hoping to rally the political will to prevent another tragedy like Hurricane Katrina.

My company has the pleasure of designing and illustrating Tony Hsieh’s (CEO of Zappos) PowerPoint presentation. I met him, Alfred Lin, Brian Kalma and Loren Becker at SXSW 2009 while I was graphically recording the keynotes. They appreciated the graphic recording and apparently had been looking for someone to partner with them on employee classes. So, one thing led to another and I found myself and one of my principal illustrators, Erik Kuntz, working with Tony on his presentation about Zappos and the pursuit of happiness. Needless to say? Delighted. I have various other posts about Zappos so I won’t go into detail about how inspiring they are as a company, but I will say that I’m very happy with how the presentation is turning out (if you click here or on the photo above you can see most of the slides minus animation). However, since Amazon recently acquired Zappos, there are design modifications to be made, so expect an update soon enough…