Order in chaos, studio walls

Trying to work out the best approach to a problem? The five of chalks indicates, conflict, complications and disputes and that there are that there are many sides to the problem. Everyone has differing opinions about the best solutions. So you need to have an environment where you can see and discuss all the options with your colleagues.

Have all your sketches and ideas up on the walls of the studio, it may sometimes look chaotic, but as shown in the double diamond, you diverge as you research a problem , then you converge as you synthesis a solution.

I am always reminded of Bill Buxtons advice in the Chapter in Sketching User Experiences, ‘If Someone Made a Sketch in the Forest and Nobody Saw it…’ where he makes a powerful argument for pinning sketches and ideas up and fostering a discussion. I really think you need to get everyone working on participating getting all their ideas pinned up on a wall. Buxton’s analogy is design studio’s should look like Kindergarten and Elementary School room.

‘I have to say it: sketches are social things. They look lonely outside the company of other sketches and related reference material. They are lonely if they are discarded as soon as they are done. And they definitely are happiest when everyone in the studio working on the project has spent time with them…

I will go further: a design studio without ample space to pin up sketches, reference photos, clippings, and the like, is as likely to be successful as an empty dance club.’

I often see studios that look like laboratories with nothing up on the walls. It makes me as nervous as when I see an agile team doing Kanban without a whiteboard covered in stories. I’m quite analogue about this. I have spent my life asking for office walls to be covered with magnetic whiteboard film, so I could stick work up and share it with every one.