- There are lots of ways
that ideas are made tangible,
but they generally fall into two categories.
Quick prototypes meant to be shared and iterated upon,
and these can be paper prototypes to scale models
or semi-coded interactions.
And visual representations that help manage complexity
and reveal the bigger picture.
You often see these as frameworks or diagrams,
like ecosystem models, journey maps, and storyboards.
If you aren't already comfortable
with making visual analogies
and capturing the relationship between details
and the longview on a napkin or a whiteboard,
I highly recommend you explore
building your whiteboarding skills.
When we're working with complex information,
we can often draw shortcuts with symbols
like icons or simple models
and a few words to express these relationships.
And these shortcuts let us mentally bucket the information
that went into each piece,
so that we can step back and talk about the bigger picture.
For example, we were working on a problem
in the U.S. education system,
and we were talking to teachers, principals,
and state and local assessment directors.
We needed to understand the motivations and needs
of each of these types of participants,
as well as where the information in the system went.
So we started, in our team room,
drawing out the state folks,
the district, the principals, the teachers,
and the students,
and thinking about what information they needed
and how they were feeling.
And we started to find
that there was really a very hierarchical relationship
of those different people.
So we put state on top
and kind of listed out our different characteristics.
And as we were going through this,
we started to find that some things began to be very clear.
So we started to realize
that one of the reasons students were so stressed out
by the system was that each of the other players
in the system has tests and is putting things in place
to try to make sure that they get good results.
But by the time that comes down to the student,
the student is doing a ton of work.
The next step was to ask why.
Why is this happening?
So we looked at the student here...
and we started to realize...
that the reason all this is happening,
it's not that anybody has a negative point of view,
but up here are State...
and Federal folks, who are saying,
"We want to see education improve."
And they're really driving this cycle
of a state test,
the district needing to put benchmarks in,
to make sure everybody's doing well.
And that puts pressure on the principal,
to make sure that they've got the right tracking
of the students,
and the teacher with all the different assessments
that they're putting in place for the student.
So learning becomes all about testing.
You can now step back from this board,
and the visual here really highlights why that's going on.
So, the diagram helped us clarify our final story.
We eventually took this off the whiteboard
and clarified it for the client.
And it's become part of how they think about the problem
that they're trying to solve.
We did this, because we had space to do it.
We were working together on whiteboarding.
And while taking space does get time,
building your skills in sketching the longview
and navigating complexity is something
you can start on today.
So I encourage you to think about
how you can grow your skills in whiteboarding and sketching.
Check out things like The 7 Elements of Graphic Facilitation
by Bigger Picture on Youtube.
It's a really good introduction to these basics.
And then share your sketches in the course community.
I'd love to see what you're working on.
And there are also places like The Noun Project
to see how big ideas can be summarized as simple icons.
And I've got all these links in the exercise files.
Final thought is: Never think that you can't draw.
This is not about being perfect.
It's about what's revealing what's important,
so the whole group can think it through together.