Drive animated video a remarkable visualization

When I first viewed the Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, I was knocked out by the quality and effectiveness of the presentation. We've all seen a lot of video and PowerPoint presentations over the years but none can compare to the scribing technique used here.

From a content point of view, the video is a fascinating presentation adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA the factors that motivate us in the workplace. In brief, the values which motivate people in work requiring cognitive skills are autonomy, mastery and purposefulness. Pink cites several research studies and provides good examples in making his case. As the author of four books about the changing world of work — including the New York Times bestsellers, A Whole New Mind and Drive — he has great material with which to work.

The video was posted 2010-04-10 and there have been 1.4 million views and, given the topic, there has been a lot of interest.

This video is one of the RSAnimate: Bringing discourse to life series of animated scribing videos which may be found at RSAnimate. The series and how it came about is described in two posts, RSAnimate (Directors Notes) and RSAnimate (better taste than sorry). Another post, Drive well: Pay People Enough, observes that the RSA animated videos have gone viral.

The video scribing technique employed in these videos is the work of Andrew Park at Cognitive Media. See his blog post, RSA Animate – Dan Pink, Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.

From reading about this artist and the video series, I conclude that Andrew Park developed the material from the Dan Pink talk as well as drawing the images used. This is a rare talent.

Finally, from people who develop visualizations, one would expect a visually oriented site and Cognitive Media doesn't disappoint. The purpose of the site is set out in an image on the home page which simply states:

This website is designed to show what Cognitive Media does rather than explain the purpose behind our actions. ….

Another example of Cognitive Media's work is written up in An Illustrated Weekly World of Design, 04 August 2009 with the observation that these drawings are part mindmap and part comic book, and the result is a visual map that tells a story.