💎 Friday Gems (A Visual Thinking Tool, Systems Oriented Design Animation, Writing = Design)
Kindness is Gangsta!💥
Good morning dear readers,
I’m returning after a long hiatus. I hope all is well with you considering the global turmoil. Yes, America is burning, our government is a clown show, hate, bigotry, fascism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, is on the rise, wars are being forced upon us, and the only thing that seems to matter are the gas prices, not the devastation to precious human lives no matter their skin color. Despite the bleak outlook, we move forward and pick up the strength to come together and help each other through these challenging times. ✊🏽
Today's Gems
Visual Thinking: The Building Blocks of Deep Thinking
The Mindful Designer: What is Systems Oriented Design: An Animation
Communication: Writing is Design
Visual Thinking
The Building Blocks of Deep Thinking
“True human genius lies in the way we are able to take facts and concepts out of our heads, using physical space to spread out that material, to structure it, and to see it anew.” - Annie Murphy Paul
Visual thinking is about getting ideas out of your head and onto an external surface, like paper or a digital whiteboard. In this video Doug Neill from Verbal to Visual shares a simple tool to help you wrangle complexity and remember the important information.
You may have experienced this yourself when reading a book with lots of great information that you wanted to remember but there is just too much information and yes you can take notes but sometimes those get lost in the shuffle and you forget the information you wanted to remember.
The solution?
Create a visual reference of the information on a 3x5 or 4x6 card to help you remember it so you can use it in your own creative work.
I used four-by-six index cards to identify the key topics and capture some of those details with sketches and words and page references.
I think you’ll benefit both from the modularity of these tools (how you can move them around) and also the disposability of them. If you don’t like how one index card or sticky note turns out, you can recycle it and then quickly grab another one. Each of those individual chunks is a much lighter lift than trying to capture, all in one go, everything about the topic you’re working on.
This is a great way to quickly capture and remember the important pieces of information you come across in your day, whether it’s a process, a meeting, a video, a book, or any other complex topic you’re trying to make sense of.
🔗 The Building Blocks of Deep Thinking
The Mindful Designer
What is Systems Oriented Design: An Animation
Continuing the thread of visual thinking, the video above does an amazing job of helping you quickly understand what System Oriented Design is.
After watching the video, you just get it. No long explanations that dive into too much detail, that’s the power of visual thinking and visual communication.
Systems Oriented Design helps us examine complex issues through different lenses, from interconnected problems to known unknowns, to understanding which groups of people are having problems and which people can help. Mapping all this complexity helps identify the root causes so you can implement solutions that address the root problems.
🔗 Systems Oriented Design
Communication
Writing is Design
Design is writing, and writing is design. Writing is critical for conveying our ideas and designs. It helps us gather and organize our thoughts so we can communicate clearly and succinctly. The better our writing is, the more effectively we can communicate with our team members to convey the importance of what we design.
In this article PJ Onori, shares principles that illustrate how good writing and good design are the same.
Designers devote endless hours to make their solutions more elegant. They understand the importance of detail. They cherish clarity and simplicity. The same isn’t often said about their craftsmanship of words.
🔗 Writing is Design
The Homework Machine
The Homework Machine,
Oh, the Homework Machine,
Most perfect
contraption that’s ever been seen.
Just put in your homework, then drop in a dime,
Snap on the switch, and in ten seconds’ time,
Your homework comes out, quick and clean as can be.
Here it is— ‘nine plus four?’ and the answer is ‘three.’
Three?
Oh me . . .
I guess it’s not as perfect
As I thought it would be.
That’s it for this week’s Friday Gems.
In stillness, find your next step.✊🏽
