This Ted talk by Tom Wujec is about a simple design exercise which starts with a question and then which helps us to understand that how can we collaborate things so all this started with a simple question which was to how to make a toast and it has three parts the whole concept behind this exercises was to let people know that how can they understand and solve complex problems.
The first exercise was to take a plain paper and without using any words, one begin
to draw how to make toast. And most people draw very creatively.
Tom Wujec collected hundreds of designs some were really good and they clearly reflected the whole process but some really sucked which may be because the people couldn't understand it and there was a different logic behind it as everyone has a different way of visualizing their experience. For example some drew all about the toaster not the toast as the engineer love to draw the mechanics of this. Though all drawing were different but the only thing that was common in them were nodes and links
most drawings have nodes and links. So nodes represent the
tangible objects like the toaster and people, and links represent the
connections between the nodes. And it's the combination of links and
nodes that produces a full systems model, and it makes our private
mental models visible about how we think something works. So that's
the value of these things. What's interesting about these systems
models is how they reveal our various points of view.
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| The System Model |
Second exercise was to draw 'how to make toast' but this time with sticky notes or cards by doing this people were able to draw it more clearly, with more details and more logical nodes and as they were building up their model they move their nodes around and re arranged them like Lego blocks the whole process made it easy to analyze so this was a whole essence of the design process. This whole process suggests that with the ease with which they were able to change the representation varied according to the willingness to improve the model. So sticky note systems are not only more fluid, they generally produce way more nodes than static drawings. The drawings are much richer.
The third exercise was to do it in a group. Initially it was a process which gets messier as the number of member increases but as the model is refined,it gets clear because people build on top of each other's ideas which emerges as a unified system model that integrates the diversity of everyone's individual's point of view.
Now, what's also really interesting, that the groups spontaneously
mix and add additional layers of organization to it?
The idea behind choosing this video was that it is really useful
for us as from the first practices we learned that, through drawing we are able to understand
the situations as systems with nodes and their
relationships. Following that through second practices movable cards
produce better systems models, because we can repeat much more
fluidly. And then the group notes produce the most comprehensive models
because we synthesize several points of view. So that's
interesting. When people work together under the right
circumstances, group models are much better than individual models.Its have positive results in all type of works.
So hence i have learned that next time i am confronted with an interesting
challenge,I will work what i have learned from this video which is to make our ideas visible, tangible, and consequential. It's simple, it's fun, it's powerful, and I believe it's an idea worth sharing.
Link to the Ted talk
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