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Experts Sketch

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[Originally posted at brendamichelson.com in May 2017. Moved here 12.23.2020.]

I think best with a marker in my hand. Always have. My workspace, and all paths to and from it, are littered with box and line diagrams, doodles, code snippets, and my (at that moment) best idea ever, on any scrap of paper, notebook or whiteboard within reach.

Quirky, my friends think. But, I’m far from alone. Especially in the software field.

In the wonderful Software Design Decoded, 66 Ways Experts Think, an early section is Experts Sketch.

Experts Externalize Their Thoughts [24]

Experts sketch when they think. They sketch when alone. They sketch in meetings with colleagues or clients. They sketch when they have no apparent need to sketch. They sketch on paper, on whiteboards, on napkins, in the air. Experts know that sketching is a way to interact with their own thoughts, an opportunity to externalize, to examine, and advance what they have in their minds.

How do experts sketch? Messily, formally and in between. Pressing notation to their advantage, as a tool rather than constraint. Ever been in a room where the model’s notational correctness overtakes the problem (or solution) correctness? Consider these practices:

Experts Use Notations as Lenses, Rather Than Straightjackets [21]

Experts understand the true value of notations: they serve as lenses to examine a design solution from a particular perspective. Experts are not married to any notation and will use whichever notation best suits the task at hand…

Experts Invent Notations [28]

Experts choose a notation that suits the problem, even if the notation does not exist. New notations arise when, in the heat of design, shorthand symbols are used that take on a meaning of their own…

An insight that, frankly, was a relief to me: re-drawing is a good thing. Not all repetition falls under that insanity definition adage. Results can differ, for the better:

Experts Repeat Activities [44]

…Experts draw a diagram, then draw it again, and perhaps again and again. Experts repeat these activities because they know that, each time they do so, they must re-engage with a fresh mindset and re-explain to themselves or to others. Variations in how they engage, think, draw, and communicate, as well as variations in what they choose to focus on, uncover new issues and opportunities.

Regarding variation:

Experts Change Notation Deliberately [49]

Experts ask themselves what would happen if they remodeled what they have in a different notation, using somewhat different modeling concepts or somewhat different semantics. Differences in expression can prompt them to consider additional issues.

Beyond sketching, Software Design Decoded covers simplification, non-linearity, collaboration, uncertainty, fear and more.

If you are curious how your practices match with, or can be expanded to, expert levels, pick up this book.

And if you work with a manager that doesn’t get your seemingly random, casual, exploratory approach, drop a copy on their desk.

Drawing (even poorly) to See via The Book of Life

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I recently unearthed my (real world) drawing pencils and purchased a pixel point stylus to add more illustration to my public works.

If you’ve worked with me, you know that drawing — on a whiteboard, legal pad, printer paper, using Visio, wherever — is a huge part of my process. Drawing helps me understand new ideas, think through problems, invite collaboration and communicate.

And while I’ve drawn some lovely Visio diagrams, my pencil-based drawing skills sit squarely in the fair range. A very long time ago, they were better. Because I worked at it, daily.

Now, I can either quietly, privately rebuild those skills, or throw caution and doodles (as it were) to the winds. I’m leaning towards the latter, because it’s not about artistry, but thinking and communication.

On this talent-is-overrated line, John Rushkin‘s thoughts on the importance of drawing, as described in The Book of Life:

Before the invention of photography, people used to draw far more than they do today. It was an active necessity. But in the mid-19th century, photography killed drawing. It became something only ‘artists’ would ever do, so Ruskin – passionate promoter of drawing and enemy of the camera – spent four years on a campaign to get people sketching again. He wrote books, gave speeches and funded art schools, but he saw no paradox in stressing that his campaign had nothing to do with getting people to draw well: ‘A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.’

So if drawing had value even when it was practised by people with no talent, it was for Ruskin because drawing can teach us to see: to notice properly rather than gaze absentmindedly. In the process of recreating with our own hand what lies before our eyes, we naturally move from a position of observing beauty in a loose way to one where we acquire a deep understanding of its parts.

via On the Importance of Drawing | The Book of Life.

[Bold is mine.]

Connective thinking is rare, crucial – 1959 Essay by Isaac Asimov on Creativity

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Connective thinking ability cited as key trait in newly published Isaac Asimov essay on Creativity:

But what if the same earth-shaking idea occurred to two men, simultaneously and independently? Perhaps, the common factors involved would be illuminating. Consider the theory of evolution by natural selection, independently created by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.

There is a great deal in common there. Both traveled to far places, observing strange species of plants and animals and the manner in which they varied from place to place. Both were keenly interested in finding an explanation for this, and both failed until each happened to read Malthus’s “Essay on Population.”

Both then saw how the notion of overpopulation and weeding out which Malthus had applied to human beings would fit into the doctrine of evolution by natural selection if applied to species generally.

Obviously, then, what is needed is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected.

Undoubtedly in the first half of the 19th century, a great many naturalists had studied the manner in which species were differentiated among themselves. A great many people had read Malthus. Perhaps some both studied species and read Malthus. But what you needed was someone who studied species, read Malthus, and had the ability to make a cross-connection.

That is the crucial point that is the rare characteristic that must be found. Once the cross-connection is made, it becomes obvious. Thomas H. Huxley is supposed to have exclaimed after reading On the Origin of Species, “How stupid of me not to have thought of this.”

But why didn’t he think of it? The history of human thought would make it seem that there is difficulty in thinking of an idea even when all the facts are on the table. Making the cross-connection requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a “new idea,” but as a mere “corollary of an old idea.”

Asimov also ponders the need and purpose of collaboration, along with providing a (still relevant) tip on sparking and extracting wisdom:

In the same way, a session-arbiter will have to sit there, stirring up the animals, asking the shrewd question, making the necessary comment, bringing them gently back to the point. Since the arbiter will not know which question is shrewd, which comment necessary, and what the point is, his will not be an easy job.

via Published for the First Time: a 1959 Essay by Isaac Asimov on Creativity | MIT Technology Review.

Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

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