4D Deliverables
From GPWiki
Monday 08 of February, 2010
"Like all forms of design, visual design is about problem solving, not about personal preference or unsupported opinion."
—Bob Baxley, 2003
[edit] Physical Deliverables
[edit] The exact deliverables required for each assignment emerge during each phase. They are usually determined once the engagement has begun. They are a direct part of the assignment, effectively they are the soundtrack; the narrative - they fulfill specific applications and they are always bespoke to each assignment.
The documents we develop are a fundamental part of our whole approach - designed to sustain value and engage the wider enterprise or other key stakeholders who weren't present.
[edit] We produce deliverables in the following media
- Frameworks. At whatever size and which depict the intervention directly. They can be digital or hand drawn versions and will contain as much or as little narration or storyboarding as required by the case.
- Housings. Frameworks built within their own covers to act as distributable records of the event. Primarily used as reminders for the team or as fast guidance and recall of the insights and actions that will emerge.
- Workbooks. These are detailing the conversation and content from each session. Often these will contain action pages and call for work to be added as a result of the findings of the sessions themselves.Discovery Framework, Development Framework
- Storybooks. More thorough and cohesive' which narrate the overall story of the strategy or transformation.
- Guidebooks. Overall assignment record and guidance. This document would carry extensive phases with guidance on the next phases or navigation around Deep Dives and the more detailed parts of the approach.
- SVT Live Systems and digital solutions for Winning Bids or for general enterprise applications. These are on-line and public or for use in internal communication situations. See SVT Live
[edit] There follows some general principles that can be applied across the approach
[edit] The Direct Benefits of Visualisation
"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." - Charles Mingus
The framework displays the entire record of the live capture of the session and will carry significant insights as a form of additional narration to explain what was learned. See Outcomes
The workbooks contain the full record of the event. The full sequence is narrated and key insights are captured. See Outcomes 
All significant information and the actions or summaries of the decisions made are presented in a clear and readily accessible format. Big Pictures
[edit] Fundamentals
Our mission and role is to simplify complexity and improve performance for our clients In doing so we accelerate value and opportunity for our clients.[edit] Our Tools
Collaboration, Facilitation, Creativity, Pattern Recognition, Pattern Recognition, Playbooks, Innovation, Information Design, Thinking and Visualisation[edit] Approach
4D and Structured Visual Thinking are Group Partners approaches to answering the important questions of business. See Clients, References, Solutions, Outcomes, FAQs, Big PicturesBecause we place such a strong emphasis on visualisation there are a direct number of benefits:
Common understanding. It is much harder to develop multiple interpretations of an image and much easier to grasp the key points.
Removal of complexity and information overload. Attention can focus on the most significant points and the visual can reduce a relatively complex story dramatically
Impact. The act of co creating the visual will result in greater focus and attention – and the audience will find it much easier to repeat the ‘story’ to others using the visual as a prompt.
Pictures are more inclusive. Pictures have an iconic, emotive quality that helps to keep understanding and consensus alive and healthy. Shared commitment is continuously reinforced because everyone can still see a depiction of what the team collectively thought, where the decided it should lead and why they all agreed to go there together.
“Visualisation engages and excites in ways that other techniques do not - it can then embrace the entire enterprise in the the most simple and effective way”
See Structured Visual Thinking
[edit] Options
"Visual appearance is one of the most effective variables for quickly differentiating one application from another." —Bob Baxley, 2003
Our visuals are a mixture of hand drawn and digital as illustrated in this section. During an intervention. (Experience) the relationship between the team and the final outcome is very personal and the hand drawn becomes an important artefact within the programme. In other instances it is appropriate to take a more sophisticated visual approach and to develop complex digital images to support communications and presentations.
Structured Visual Thinking™ is deployed throughout the 4D™ approach.
In Interventions: we develop massive floor to ceiling visual frameworks with teams. Starting the day with a blank canvass the workshop discussion comes to life through interpretation and synthesis and plenty of co creation from the audience.
In Systems: the images we create can be made completely interactive and deployed as part of stand alone applications or within web sites and intranets. Each visual is made up of multiple components which can drive navigation or provide drill downs into multiple levels, allowing the audience to choose the level of complexity that suits their need at their own pace. See SVT Live
[edit] Supporting Context
All visualisation is supported by detailed narrative which will have been contextualised before, during and in between interventions in line with the logic of the relevant contextual frameworks.
These outputs generally take the form of a workbook or storybook that can be packaged in a variety of ways and always incorporate the key visual images that emerged through the process.
[edit] More Detail
Framework in Housing – this is an electronic version of the visual that is developed during the session with additional context, some design and layout and is ‘housed’ in a folder. The framework pulls out of this but is packaged in a manageable A4 size casing. That is probably the minimum deliverable we would produce and we would typically print a larger wall size version of this plus provide the client with the artwork to produce their own. To do this we would need some additional context in the shape of high level notes that could be used in support of the framework.
Mini Workbook – an advancement of the previous which contains visuals plus supporting narrative – design and layout by our team and can be available in a number of ways - slide deck, document, brochure – soft and hard copies. This is heavily dependent on some reasonable notes from the session and ideally we would want someone taking photos of the team etc and providing ‘clues’ for themes and key points so that we could do some additional context work post session.
Full workbook – a detailed record of the event structured in support of the framework – as per the ‘classic’ description. This is a 2/3 person effort over a 2 week period.
