Condition 010
When you’re figuring something out,
polish is procrastination in disguise.
A Shitty Map is a quick, imperfect visual expression of an idea that invites discussion, play, and improvement. But why would we make shitty maps when it’s so easy, with the digital tools at our disposal, to make good looking ones?
A shitty map is faster.
Faster to start. Shitty maps are a great way to figure out what you’re talking about, which means you don’t have to know what you’re talking about before you start. So just make it.
Faster to create. Shitty maps don’t care about what they look like. They are a means to an end and that end is understanding. When you’re trying to figure out or express how something works, polish impedes understanding. So just make it.
Faster to throw out. Shitty maps are often wrong and need to be discarded. This doesn’t mean they were ineffective, it means we figured out that something wasn’t the right approach and so we’ve narrowed the scope of possibility. When you spend time making something look good that you haven’t yet validated, you run the risk of not just throwing out a bad idea, but also throwing out good design work. So just make it.
Faster to iterate. Shitty maps are rough drafts, they’re meant to propose an argument and sometimes that argument is correct, but many times it’s not-quite-right. A Shitty map puts up no barriers to participation, so if I see something inaccurate about someone else’s shitty map, its shittiness is an invitation for me to correct it. So just make it.
Faster to get feedback. Building on the iteration idea, if I make a shitty map and I get something wrong, I don’t mind. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. I get to say, “thank you for finding that, that’s exactly the kind of thing I am looking for.” It isn’t as easy to do that when something looks nice. So just make it.
Faster to share. A shitty map can be drawn at any time, in any place, with anyone, all without requiring any notice. Not only is it faster to share than a fancy-looking map that’s taken hours to create, it’s often faster than trying to use language in such a way to get everyone on the same page. So just make it.
Don’t wait for permission.
Don’t wait for complete understanding.
Don’t wait for time to get everything right.
Just make it.
Thanks for reading,
Confident Moves
Try this in less than 10 minutes:
Just make it.
“Joe, you say, ‘just make it,’ but I don’t draw…”
I use six shapes when making 90% of my Shitty Maps.
- Grab a piece of paper and try making each of these shapes.
Are some harder than others? (I cannot ever seem to make a star outline, only the star with the lines in the middle)- A Circle/Oval – These are good for grouping and holding things. I like circles because they rarely get mistaken for buttons or screens when doing conceptual work for software. They also are nice for overlapping, like venn-diagrams.
- A Square/Rectangle – These are nice for highlighting something or turning a word into an object. A stack of rectangles can show that there are multiple of something (like a stack of pages).
- A Triangle – A circle stacked on a triangle is a person. A line stacked on a triangle is a teeter-totter or a scale. A line next to a triangle is an arrow with emphasis.
- A Star – I tend to use stars as a placeholder for a goal, or an objective.
- An Arrow – a simple line-based arrow can show movement or orientation.
- A Line – place pen down, move hand, pick pen up. 🙂
- Handwriting – Lists and words are huge in shitty mapping. I tend to not write sentences (except as titles), but words and lists that are meaningfully positioned on a page are crucial.
- Try making compound shapes.
What other shapes can you make with these simple ones (like the person made from a circle and a triangle)? - Create a shitty map, using these shapes, to quickly describe your morning routine to someone (that someone can be yourself).
This is practice and it’s dumb, but shitty maps are fast, so just do it and then move on with your day.