Last fall, I spoke to the folks at Google's Boulder, Colorado office. You can see my talk over on YouTube and authors@google, but that's not the point of this post.
The point is this software Google has created, called Sketchup.
In Look Me in the Eye, I wrote about how I see things in my mind. When I wrote the book I had no idea how common that was, or how it might fit with the rest of society. Now, I know that visualization skills like mine are fairly common in people with autism.
Some of us see electronic circuits. Others see numbers as shapes and colors, or music as colors and forms. Our visualization abilities seem to vary quite a lot.
Of course, many non-autistic people have visualization skills too. You may have exceptional visualization abilities yourself. They are by no means limited to folks on the spectrum. But here's an important point: I have met people with non-verbal autism who cannot speak, and yet can render remarkable things through drawing. It's clear that someone like that might "speak" through his artistic creations in a way that he can't with words.
For such a person, "speaking through visualization" can be of tremendous importance. But how do we augment or harness the skill?
I have always been able to put my visualization skills to practical use. For example, I'm pretty good at imagining what a room will look like if I remodel it a certain way, or I can "see" a new bumper for a Land Rover in my mind before we actually make it up.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks has written about visualization and autism in several of his books, and Temple Grandin talks about her own in Thinking In Pictures.
Visualization has served me very well in work life, and I'm sure others on the spectrum have benefited in a similar way. I always wondered if there was some computer based tool to augment my internal ability. Back when I worked in engineering, we had AutoCad - a great program - but it never really helped me visualize things. It's just too structured and complicated. And as users know, it's more CAD and production oriented.
Programs like Microsoft Draw and Paint were too simplistic. They might be great for small children but for a grownup making real things . . . not much use, at least for me.
Then, out of the blue, a program presented itself to me. Google Sketchup.
The day I met Sketchup started off in a memorable way. I'd been scheduled to talk to a group of engineers at Google Boulder. I didn't know anything about them, or what they did. I just knew I was supposed to show and talk to a room full of geeks in a few hours. I was staying at one of those Marriott Suites places on the edge of town a few miles from the Google offices. After looking at the map on my iPhone, I decided I would walk there.
On the way to the office, an antelope walked right past me. Some of you may commune with antelopes daily, but for me it was a totally remarkable experience. As a result, I arrived at Google exhilarated and excited.
After my talk, my host Tom Wyman took me around the office to show me what they did. The thing he was most proud of was this thing they call Sketchup.
Sketchup is a remarkably easy to use program that allows user to create complex shapes. The shapes can be anything at all - buildings, televisions, or just things from your imagination. Once you've built a shape you can view it from all angles and even make multiple shapes and populate your own world.
The program includes a library of common shapes; things like windows, cars, and trees. You can use or modify those shapes and integrate them into your own world. Some of the creations I've seen look like renderings in an architect's office, while others look like the cover art from science fiction and fantasy novels. And then you have the detailed renderings of machines, both real and imaginary.
For someone who sees complex things in the mind it's a remarkable tool because you can finally make your imaginings real. You can twist and turn them and morph them into different and more unique creations. In doing so, you automatically increase your intuitive comprehension of perspective, shape, and complex geometry. Even if your're not autistic, this program will take you down the road of "seeing" complex mathematics.
By some stroke of luck, Tom and the other Googleites saw the potential for this tool in the hands of autistic kids, and they started a collaboration with a group in the Boulder schools. I was able to see examples of things the kids thought up on their wall. It was most impressive. This is what Tom wrote about it: "Inspired by what we've learned, we've partnered with the Boulder, Colorado chapter of the Autism Society of America, the Boulder Valley School District, and the Life Long Learning Lab at University of Colorado to provide children with software and guidance that may help them to express an idea or even develop a life skill."
They actually started a program for schools and kids called Project Spectrum, which is online here:
http://www.google.com/educators/spectrum.html
If you look at the artwork on the site I'm sure you will be impressed. When you consider the ages of the kids, it's all the more remarkable. Sketchup's ability to give voice to autistic kids is wonderful, but I almost feel the autism focus sells the program short.
Why do I say that? Because I believe all kid can benefit from improved visualization abilities, and this is a program that can help. It may be particularly relevant to kids on the spectrum, but it's got great potential for teaching geometry and many sophisticated concepts to all kids. I can still remember sitting in Geometry class, and how boring it was. It was boring because it lacked context and relevance. This software brings those concepts to life in a totally unique way. Sketchup's way of taking a boring triangle and making it three dimensional and alive makes a formerly uninteresting subject fun and fascinating.
Sketchup can be downloaded free from the Google site. Here's a link.
http://sketchup.google.com
