The point about miscommunication really resonated with me; I think especially among new or unseasoned teams, miscommunication is almost a given, where everyone pretends they know what is going on and is on the same page but has different opinions and conceptions of how things are in their own minds, like in the example graphics and anecdotes in the reading. I thought it was really poignant how shared understanding is such a difficult ideal to reach; either shared documents or writing or graphics or amalgamation of different methods of tactics to ensure everyone interprets everything the same way.
I think design processes I’ve learned in the past emphasize collaboration and visual representaions of thoughts — from story mapping to sticky noting and everything in between. Everything is laid out in a bite-sized or “story-fied” way (perhaps to make things seem more dynamic and quirky and “design”). There’s a lot of formulaic derivation strategies, such as “How Might We” questions and deriving insights and putting things in neat cookie cutter boxes with different personas and use cases and user scenarios and role plays, etc. Relating back to an earlier reading about design thinking and its false promise of panacea, I feel like most design strategies I’ve learned feed into that, where they’re easy to execute and follow, but when done incorrectly or ineffectively, they lead you to a solution or conclusion that isn’t necessarily optimal — especially if people aren’t on the same page while doing them, or don’t engage fully and intentionally during and between each step.
I personally think collaboration and visual communication are wonderful and engaging and stimulating. However, I really don’t know if overall that’s an effective strategy for promoting shared understanding. I definietly think any sort of collaborative and everyone-is-involved activity is significantly better than having one pereson facilitate everything in promoting shared understanding, but I feel like the entire process and physical amount of materials and steps required may lead to friction and bottlenecks as well, as well as being hard to keep track of and consolidate and hop back into.
