课程: Systems Thinking for Product Designers

Static diagramming as a snapshot

课程: Systems Thinking for Product Designers

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Static diagramming as a snapshot

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- [Instructor] Diagrams used to visualize systems are typically divided into two broad categories: static diagrams, which represent the state of the system at a moment in time, and dynamic or behavioral diagrams, which illustrate how the system changes over time. Function diagramming is static, so it's critical to keep in mind. Most products do different things at different times. The function diagram is going to change depending on the product output or primary function. To identify opportunities for improvement, it's critical to see the full picture and analyze different states of the product, looking for opportunities to make the product better. Let's look at a simple example. A water bottle is a tangible system with at least two components, a bottle and a cap. I think we'd all agree that its function is to hold water. The test of this assumption is a thought experiment. What would happen if the bottle vanished? In that case, we'd expect to see a puddle, so yes, the bottle is actually doing something to the water. The water would change if the bottle were removed from the system. Simple enough, what happens when we drink out of a water bottle? Well, now its function has changed. The bottle shouldn't be holding the water. The bottle should be channeling the water into the drinker's mouth. Again, we can test if it's performing that function sufficiently by measuring the flow of liquid into the mouth. If you think this is too simple of a function to focus on, think about all the effort beer companies invested in anti-glug cans. They determined that a standard can was insufficiently performing. It's a liquid channeling function. So products are almost always multi-tools, performing different functions at different times. This is critical, and this is often the reason for innovative design features that we find in products. This is why we have twist caps on water bottles. They adapt the product between the state of holding water and the state of channeling water. This is a critical source of innovation. The complex form of a hammerhead is responding to two or more functions, hitting the nail on the head and removing the nail. If a drinking container is always upright, it will look like a cup. It's not until you have the alternative, the bottle upside down, that you have to add a cap, and then it becomes a more complex product. The need to toggle between holding liquid and channeling liquid becomes more complex when the product is intended for a less coordinated or more curious user. Most parents have seen the huge variety of sippy cups. That variety illustrates that no one, no product developer, has conclusively solved the problem of adapting to these different functional states and performing all these functions sufficiently for a baby. When performing function analysis, it's critical to remember that a single diagram represents a particular state of the product in a moment in time, Don't try to compress multiple states, it becomes too confusing. On the other hand, products have multiple states, so multiple function diagrams are required to represent all of their functions. Representing products with multiple function diagrams reveals opportunities for improvement and reveals opportunities for innovation, even for simple products, as we can see in the design of sippy cups and hammers.

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