Journaling About Creativity, Design, and Collaboration: 18. Lists, Maps, Flows: Essence of Design Mindset and Expression

Continuing this series, where I share one page and transcription of a handwritten journal entry.

Lists, Maps, Flows: Essence of Design Mindset and Expression

Page 18

Gather what matters as a list.

Maps create space and relate areas of concern.

Flows arrange in time when something happens, then what next.

Put them together and you have a useful credible explorable credibility.

These are tools to reach beyond your individual point of view.

A way to gather, learn, express what you learn.

Brief reaction to transcribing this page.

My first reaction to this page: reducing ideas to a brief lyrical prose is a specific practice. When I review these journal pages again I'll do some comparing to see which pages sound and flow more like lyrics. Then also I wonder which ones are more concrete and which are more impressionistic.

This page comes from practicing the information architecture, facilitating group collaboration, and making lists, maps, and flows both individually and in groups.

Lists are such a friendly place to start expressing ideas. Then I see a connection with how maps are add a spatial dimension and flows add time. Three kinds of forms lists can take.

Get your ideas into any of those list forms and you can take a big idea and focus on clarifying, understanding, investigating, one portion of the big idea. A particular item on a list. A place on a map. A position in the flow. Powerful tools to help at any stage of creating whether you're figuring out which problem is your focus, planning the work, or reflecting back at recent work.