How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert

Chapter 3: Face Reality | Page 70

5. Venn Diagram

A Venn diagram is useful for highlighting overlapping concepts or objects. The overlap, known to some as the hedgehog or the nut, represents how these things relate. In this example, both pizza and movie relate to Friday night at home.

This same technique can be used to sort things into sets based on how they’re similar. For example, we might make a circle for movies we love and one for movies referencing pizza, and put the movies we love that reference pizza in the overlap.

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.