How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert

Chapter 3: Face Reality | Page 67

2. Flow Diagram

A flow diagram outlines the steps in a process, including conditions a user or system is under, and connections between tasks.

Conditions are rules that dictate the flow. For example, the path I take in the flow is different if I’m ordering for pickup or delivery.

Chapter 3: Face Reality | Page 76

Try diagramming.

1. Make a block diagram that shows how the pieces of a concept interrelate.
2. Demystify a process by making a flow diagram.
3. Break your latest project down into its individual tasks and make a Gantt chart.
4. Compare a group of restaurants in your neighborhood in a quadrant diagram.
5. Explore what happens when concepts or objects overlap using a Venn diagram.
6. Break any multi-user process into a list of tasks per user with a swim lane diagram.
7. Depict the content and organization of your favorite website in a hierarchy diagram.
8. Unload all of the cool ideas in your mind right now in a mind map.
9. Explain how to make your favorite food with a simple schematic. Bonus point for exploding it!
10. Make a journey map of a day in your life.

Chapter 7: Prepare to Adjust | Page 149

The sum is greater than its parts.

We need to understand the sum of a lot of pieces to make sense of what we have.

For example, let’s say we’re working on bringing a product to the market. To support this process, we might create:

• A hierarchical diagram of how the product is structured and labeled for users
• A flow diagram of the sequence users experience in the product
• A lexicon of terms the product will use, vetted to make sense to our audience

These are all important pieces individually, but we need to look at them together to answer questions about the whole such as:

• What will users experience?
• Who will work on what, why, and with whom?
• When will things be released and how?
• How will things change over time?