How Whiteboard Walls Enhance Problem-Solving for Tech Innovators like SpaceX

Highly successful technology firms like SpaceX practice the art of innovation with many tools, including standard whiteboards; however, doing so on whiteboard walls is much more productive. For example, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted a photo showing part of a new system design for X (formerly Twitter) drawn on a traditional whiteboard. The image reveals the limitations of creating a large, detailed schematic in the confined space of a framed whiteboard.

The picture fails to represent X’s whole 2.0 system design, as would be possible on the huge canvas of a whiteboard wall. Instead, it just shows the last diagram in a series of diagrams, each introducing one component of how X 2.0 works. However, if Elon Musk had had access to a big whiteboard wall, he would have had enough room to depict all the diagrams related to building the X 2.0 platform.

This article will explore how large, open-ended whiteboard walls can help innovators like Mr. Musk easily create large detailed system diagrams and do countless other tasks. Accordingly, whiteboard walls installed in your office can greatly enhance your team’s problem-solving and project development efforts. This will help you improve your bottom line and maintain an edge in the highly competitive technology market.

Dynamic Problem Mapping

While using words to describe a chain of complex relationships might be difficult, creating a clear picture of these relationships can make the effort easier. The visual technique of dynamic problem mapping allows you to gain insights into solutions in ways you can’t achieve through words or numbers alone.  The technique is especially well-suited for addressing complex issues with many variables and interconnections. That’s where whiteboard walls come in.

More complex problem maps, even when logically correct, can lead you to make decisions with unwanted outcomes. On the other hand, creating more developed maps can provide needed insights on how a problem works systemically. This will give you a sense of how your team’s actions may reverberate throughout an entire project or system. With whiteboard walls, it’s a snap to perform intricate, detailed problem mapping that can cover all the bases and provide you with the plan of action you need.

Here are some steps to take in creating a problem map with your team:

1. Draw a circle and write the problem inside.
2. Brainstorm the primary causes and other concepts involved with your problem, such as factors, flow rates, and even abstract ideas like wealth. Draw more circles around the original circle and write the primary causes in these circles.
3. Brainstorm the secondary causes. These include the factors that cause your primary causes.  You can extract secondary causes from your first brainstorming list or brainstorm a new list of secondary causes for each primary cause.  Then draw circles outside your primary causes and write the secondary causes inside.           
4. Add interrelationships between the causes. Here, you use lines and arrows to connect all the causes that are associated with any other cause, even if they don’t lead directly to the problem.
5. Describe each of the relationships between the causes, such as “adds to” or “lessens” (e.g., cause #1a adds to cause #1, or cause #1a lessens cause #1).

By following these steps, you can create a first draft of your problem map and then take pictures of it to convert it into a fuzzy cognitive map using computer software. This will permit you to run simulations of changes you want to make and observe subsequent changes in the system as a whole.

Fostering Productive Brainstorming Sessions

What do you think of when you imagine a group of colleagues gathered in front of a blank whiteboard wall for a brainstorming session? Innovation, free-form ideation, and effective problem-solving probably come to mind. The wall’s blank canvas offers infinite possibilities and seems like an ideal place to unravel a problem or develop a creative product idea.

However, at the beginning of a brainstorming session, thinking carefully and deliberately about your project’s critical concepts and your stakeholders’ motivations and desires is essential. If you do so, you’re no longer beginning the session with a totally blank canvas. Instead, it’s already been framed by your team’s mental picture of success. You’ve heightened your group’s self-awareness by focusing on your own and other people’s needs, thus creating a welcoming environment for a productive brainstorming and decision-making experience.

Facilitating Clear Communication of Technical Concepts

The success of your technical projects can hinge on your ability to explain the nature of the technology in question, how it’s developed and used, and why it will benefit stakeholders. It’s important that you present this data accurately; avoid skipping over problem areas; and clearly outline the projected outcomes. Whiteboard walls are ideal communication tools to keep your stakeholders informed, engaged, and up to date on a project’s features and current status.

One of the key ways to clearly convey technical concepts is through visual content. That’s because visuals are easier to understand and are more often recalled than written content. You can employ diagrams, graphs, and flow charts to help explain complex ideas to stakeholders. And the large expanses of whiteboard walls are perfect for this purpose.

Printed content and spoken descriptions are both fundamental means of sharing ideas. However, when you want to make technical information easier to grasp, presenting concepts as graphics can be much more fruitful. Why is this so? Because, as mentioned, visual content is easier to assimilate and more often remembered than concepts acquired through reading or listening.

This is known as the “picture superiority effect,” and studies show that images can boost one’s ability to absorb information by as much as 36%. In fact, after three days, people are likely to recollect only ten percent of what they read or hear. But when a picture is added to reinforce the idea, they’ll recall 65%.

As a result, many owners and managers consistently use diagrams, models, and other graphics to get technical points across to colleagues and stakeholders. And if you’re searching for a speedy, efficient way to share your graphic content, look no further than a top-quality whiteboard wall.

With its huge user-friendly surface, you can easily draw, adjust, and edit your process workflows or other subject matter to meet your audience’s demands. In the case of stakeholders, they don’t need to see every part of a data flow graphic. Most want to gain a basic concept of the structure. With whiteboard walls, you can generate large easy-to-understand diagrams and other visuals that your team members and stakeholders will remember for a long time.

Supporting Rapid Prototype Testing

Rapid prototype testing is an agile strategy used during product development that helps companies adjust quickly and ensure long-term product viability. In this approach, three-dimensional prototypes of a product are generated and tested through various iterations to perfect its qualities such as size, shape, and general usability.

Whiteboard walls can be invaluable aids in employing this approach as they offer a huge place to sketch out and revise countless two-dimensional versions of prototypes that may later be transformed into three-dimensional versions using computer software and 3-D printing. Thus, drawing prototypes with low-odor dry erase markers on whiteboard walls can be a handy way to conduct preliminary prototyping.

Encouraging Creative Divergence Before Convergence

Divergence and convergence are two essential stages of the creative process commonly used in design and other fields. Divergence is the stage where team members open their senses, absorb new information, and explore numerous potential ideas without drawing a conclusion. Convergence is the phase where the team narrows its focus, eliminates distractions, and evaluates the ideas so as to work out realistic solutions. Together, these phases harmonize to generate novel projects and solve problems.

An ideal way to engage in the divergence stage is to make use of the vast creative potential of whiteboard walls. This early stage is about expanding the range of possibilities you’re presented with, considering all likely options, exposing yourself to new thoughts, and exploring prospective paths without committing to any single one.

This is not the time to make definitive choices, sort out options, or stay within a fixed budget. It’s the time to meander, to allow the power of curiosity and destiny show you the way to unforeseen realms. This is an expansive state of mind because the range of information you’re considering is increasing – diverging from your starting point.

Once you’ve effectively used your whiteboard walls to brainstorm and explore various options, you can stop diverging and focus on summarizing the ideas you’ve already captured. At this point, you’re ready to enter the convergence phase to produce a concrete final product that you can communicate to others within an established timeframe and thus arrive at the result that your stakeholders desire.

Watch the video below!

Also read:
Using Dry Erase Walls in Problem-based Learning

Summary

Article Name

Whiteboard Walls Can Enhance Problem-Solving at SpaceX

Description

Discover how whiteboard walls drive problem-solving and innovation for tech giants like SpaceX, enhancing collaboration and creativity.

Author

Susan Anspach

Publisher Name

ReMARKable Whiteboard Paint

Publisher Logo