Weekly notes #4 On Maps and Meaning
MAPPING PROBLEMS
We are developing an experience discovery framework at work where area leads gather together to create meaning based on disparate data points, form a problem hypothesis, compare it, and then tackle the problem with different solutions, most likely probing the solutions before finding one. In a sense, it’s a linear design process: diverge to converge, research, define and design, deliver. In another sense, it has nothing to do with the linear design process because any attempt I’ve had to frame it in the archetypical double diamond or product discovery framework does not really hit the nail in the head.
I am, by no means and quite unfortunately, one to follow standardized frameworks, even if they work. This is bad for me, because it means I have to start from stratch everytime and probably lose too much thinking and doing time in tasks that I could easily do in half the time if I got used to documenting and standardizing my practices and templates. And yet, I cannot bring myself to follow the same approach every time, because 1) that means I am a robot and 2) it takes the creativity and the genius out of the activity. I have discovered that this is the right path for discovery, even if not most optimal.
In my efforts to scale my thinking and enable others to do the same things I do, I have been thinking (and asked) to explain and teach the discovery framework that we are using. This is difficult for me because I cannot explain it. I don’t have a sequence to provide or a timeline to suggest, because each problem discovery always takes a shape of its own. Sometimes I do need quantitative data, for example; some other times the missing piece is qualitative analysis. I cannot predict what happens next, because each next step brings in more light and tells me what I need to continue figuring out.
In a sense I believe I enjoy this process because it’s more or less a puzzle or a journalistic quest. I am a journalist by education and the framework to write a factful story and find the truth follows the same vague steps as product and experience discovery does. Start with an initial idea or finding, and start asking questions to it. Ask questions and fill in the gaps – or observe the gaps that cannot be filled and instead need an interpretation or an opinion. Those, in real life and in corporate work, can be filled in by involving experts or functional leads. Try to mix as many as possible, otherwise you will be missing out on perspectives. Find the numbers and ask them questions. And once you have a big picture, you can create new knowledge and meaning to build your hypothesis.
I see all the time that most people struggle transforming data and information into insights. A data point is just a data point that does not tell you anything, it just exists and it is a reaction to a trigger. Our jobs, doesn’t matter if a designer, product owner, strategist or data analyst, is to give the data a story, cross it with other pieces, and interlink it with human behavior. Human behavior doesn’t change much over the centuries, but the options available to them do. Can you interpret the data, not in what they need, but how they go about completing the task?
Just scrambled thoughts about the discovery process and also an attempt to clarify it to myself. I think the beauty of discovery is dealing with uncertainty until it leads you somewhere productive – this is much like in hard sciences or in journalism, even if what you do is experience design. Should we standardize it? Or should we instead teach the capabilities that enable discovery to happen? Like critical thinking, interpreting data, crafting stories, experimenting quick, and understanding people?
MAPPING MEANING
Tom French posted on Linkedin about his teams’ work with Israac Community Centre in Sheffield to inform local health strategies from the perspective of Somali and Somalilander people in Sheffield. Working alongside their outreach team and community researchers in the north east of Sheffield, they are exploring ways to map their expertise and insight relating to wellbeing in an asset-focused way to complement the more traditional, service-led view of what the perceived need is in the area. This, to me, seems more than relevant now that maps are (again, as always) being weaponized to create meaning; and now that hard data is owned by companies, and not by people.
Since I started doing community work a couple years back I have been very intrigued on how bottom-up data tells stories that traditional monitoring (like census) tools cannot capture. I am attracted to bottom-up mapping with civil society organisations to understand efforts and fears and necessities, identify funding gaps and organise local delivery in a way that is most efficient, impactful and ensures longevity of solutions. I don’t think we talk often enough about longevity when it comes to products and services or experiences, doesn’t matter if public or private realms.
The notion of spatial justice is not new (originated in the work of 60s Marxist theories), but now it is more than ever threatened. Jokes aside with the Gulf of America/Gulf of Mexico debate, there is an pressing need to re-assess how and if it is acceptable that a private tool like Google can out of nowhere re-name a geographical space, creating a domination in meaning. What we see, what we read, how we call our spaces, is what we interpreted.
For Henri Lefebvre (1970), spatial justice was a matter of people’s rights to access and use urban space, but also to participate in transformation processes: the so-called “right to the city”. If underlyinh processes of power shape that socio-spatial context, giving rise to varied and unequal experiences of social justice as Harvey and Sojo later studied, there is also a chance that the reverse is true, and that the analysis of those experiences of injustice can shed new light to reverse them in the systemic realms. Hence, we then can start to consider and imagine how scenarios reveal new potential configurations and dynamics of the territorial body.
Given that justice is narratively and socially defined, it won’t do to just ‘run the numbers’ when we look at its future. We need to think, not just about how Europeans define regional inequality today, but how inequality and injustice might be understood tomorrow. No one has privileged access to the future, and it’s impossible to gather data and evidence from events which haven’t happened yet; even when foresee-able trends do seem to exist, the experience of COVID-19 has reminded us how easily a seemingly inevitable curve can be bent or broken by events which decision-makers had not accounted for. (Mahon and Finch, 2021)
Therefore, in order to define scenarios to go beyond current understandings of inequality, social scientists and policy makers might want to start looking into what is actually happening in place-based settings. This is what Tom’s work above describes, and what I currently do in my fellowship work. Mapping subjective atlases and maps that tell different stories so we can understand the current dynamics better. Not just a list of numbers and have/not-haves but real lived experiences.
I am currently working on some maps and scenarios of interpretation. I am interested in how community, labour and spiritual connections are perceived and expected to evolve through the eyes of communities, and how can we ensure we prepare them accordingly to those. In particular, I work in the context of climate change but really this approach can be stretched to any topic or future threat. I will continue reporting as I progress!
Reading, watching, listening to
- Reading the magazine Spread the jelly about motherhood and parenting and womanhood in late stage capitalism. Very interested in hearing stories from moms and the socialist angles they provide.
- For some reason, maybe because I want to re-do my own portfolio, I’ve been eyeing a few architectural studio portfolios. This a6a, 6a architects are some of my favorites. There is a humble simplicity and cleanliness that rules the work of architects that I think we could borrow in certain stratas of digital design.
- I am also browsing through the projects of studio dmau and looking over Tom’s work as I mentioned above. I am very interested in the intersection of social design in several disciplines – see documentary, architecture or data science and visualization.
*The Golden Bend in the Herengracht in Amsterdam from the west by Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde (1638-1698), oil on panel, 1672
The city view only developed as a genre after 1650, with Berckheyde as one of the most important specialists. Here he captured the new buildings on the most expensive bend in the canal with mathematical precision. Leaving out the young row of trees that actually stood on the quay creates an additional artistic effect in addition to topographical reliability.
