Just doing some work on new project and looking at some explanatory diagrams.
The problem is the standard kind of diagram with boxes and arrows are not working. I have drawn multiple looped and linked diagrams but they fail to communicate something.
With both sensory and systemic work, there is a problem of diagrams both flattening and freezing meaning. The diagram loses place and the diagram loses motion.
Particularly with dynamic systems and actions, it is easy for a diagram just to provide a snapshot. The sense of dynamism and change is gone. Relationships are clear, orders and sequences are shown but there is no sense of power moving and shifting.
Use animations
Now I know, and do use in workshops, animations in diagrams. Literally showing the movement to communicate the dynamism.
However, as with some use of 3D and other novel forms of information communication, there is another problem.
Information gets flattened into PDFs.
However much we would like to use better forms of media, the nexus is the management report package. The pile of papers that is sent to the board or the lump of PDFs available for download.
In these situations, animations stop. Clever, novel ways of communicating information fail.
The diagrams for this project are going to be sent to funders. They will be uploaded as PDFs.
Something else is needed.
Use comics
Comics are better sometimes.
Comics have a whole array of ways of communicating place and motion.
This comic strip draft is fairly basic but it is better than the previous sketches I had.