Part of the problem of institutional reproduction has to do with the limitations of print culture. Print is a “fixed” medium. It crystalizes the cognitive activity of conceptualization into concepts. Once set by definition, terms resist change. The glossaries in communication textbooks, for instance, have a tendency to remain fixed through revision after revision. Definitions not only fix conceptions but they also de-contextualize them. Our corrective for this type of conceptual reproduction is to provide new venues for communication researchers by enabling them to more easily analyze "logistical" issues in the uses of research concepts—how they are planned, implemented, and adjusted. Hence, we describe our work as "conceptual logistics."

Since many of our cognitive operations are habitual, we are not conscious of them as they process our experiences.  But we can learn how to improve the various abilities that make up the way we think.  The role that visualization plays in making us aware of otherwise habitual actions is significant.  Many athletes, for example, have improved their abilities by studying videos of their play.  Similarly, charts, graphs, outlines, and other graphic organizers help persons think.  These visual tools have long been important aspects of education at every level.  Now, visual technologies have advanced so that conceptualizing as a process can be visualized.  The task ahead of us is to develop technologies that "mirror" the cognitive processes involved in learning.  
The process of comparing, for example, is a process of conceptualizing. By visualizing this process, we can make explicit what was foregrounded, backgrounded, the focus of attentional operations, the details selected, and so on.  A visualization tool, such as Hyerle's compare/contrast map, can guide persons in recalling the various aspects of the process since it first asks you to identify all of the salient parts of comparable mental events and then organizes them into generic similarities and specific differences.  In effect, it requires you to repeat the process of comparing while compiling a visual and verbal record of its phases.  With recent advances in the technology of visualization, Flash for instance, it is now possible to visualize cognitive processes dynamically.  Visualizing conceptualizing can guide persons through a cognitive process and thus facilitate the learning of abstract concepts.

These are online tools that assist researchers in conceptualizing their projects

• various concept map software
• online research tools
• the SCLCR problem description tool

These are experimental visualizations designed to help conceptualize research terminology.

• networked self
• syntagmatic & paradigmatic axes