Map
Create a map to visually show ‘where’: how multiple objects are related in space.
The main way that we navigate the three-dimensional world we live in is through our Sense of Sight, so it’s hardly a surprise that communicating where things are is best done with images.
Using words to describe how things are related to each other in space is hard; just think about what it’s like to give a stranger directions to your local market.
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This is one of the six visual frameworks identified by Dan Roam in his book The Back of the Napkin, each answering one of the key questions: who/what, how much, where, when, how, and why.
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We’re pretty good at creating maps in our heads, and really, the only way to effectively communicate that map to others is to draw it. “Over the river and through the woods…” only goes so far.
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The concept of space can be a very flexible one. For example, in his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris describes a hypothetical space that is the title of the book: “a space of real and potential outcomes whose peaks correspond to the heights of potential well-being and whose valleys represent the deepest possible suffering.” He uses this space to map out how different cultural practices translate to “different degrees of human flourishing.”
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In a similar way, we can talk about the “liminal space,” the “possibility space,” or other concepts imagined as a 3-dimensional space that can be mapped.
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Marshall McLuhan famously pointed out that “the map is not the territory.”
Therefore:
Create a map to visually show ‘where’: how multiple objects are related in space.
Specialized kinds of maps include the Mind Map and the process of Affinity Mapping