I spend a lot of time scribing thoughts and discussions from Architectural Design Sessions (ADS) in words and pictures. Diagrams that 'just work' are really important. So link of the year so far has to be this Periodic Table of Visualization Methods which has some great diagrams and ideas for their use.

There's a lot of standard fare, but a lot is new to me. Some interesting diagrams (that I use quite a lot):

• Pr - Performance Charting - a great way to perform a simple and visual gap analysis. This can really help focus the mind on the shape of the problem and therefore the solution.
• Pa - Pareto Chart - A fan of the Long Tail and the economics of abundance? I am.
• Ch - Chernoff Faces - I use faces for data with lots of ranged variables. Good visual metaphor.
• Tr - Treemaps - Can't escape them with WPF around ;)
• Kn - Knowledge Map - Used this once in a meeting - people thought I was barmy.
• Mm - Metro Map - Of course, the London Underground map works for all sorts of things.

I just need to find a way to work in a 'House of Quality (Ho)' or a 'Parameter Ruler (Pr)' into my next few sessions...

There's a bunch more visualisations at Visual Complexity