MindDraw™ By Theory Garden™

Drawing a Design Model

MindDraw also enables you to create a design image, in which you add your desires for changing the current situation. Your desires for the future are added in order to show how we would like to change the current situation and make it better. Clouds are used to show desires. A design image starts as with a theory model, which shows your understanding of the elements and relations that are currently at work in a situation of interest to you. In making a design image, you then add clouds to the theory model, showing how you would like the situation to change over time.

A design image is a useful way of thinking about a plan of action, and also for helping you understand your own hopes for the future. A design image helps you to separate your ideas about what is from your ideas of what ought to be. It shows both your theory about what causes a certain situation to be the way it is, and your design ideas about how you would like it to change it. It helps us to focus our attention on our ability to design a situation differently and to shape it more to our own liking.

 An example of a Design Model would be:

Here, the thinker designs a better way to approach studying and dealing with stress. As the cloud of desire show, the Design is to exercise daily, which will reduce stress and also improve the ability to study. Note that reducing stress will lead to an increase in the ability to study, because more stress means less ability to study, and less stress means more ability. Similarly, the desire to develop better study habits, should reduce the number of hours of study required, further reducing stress. And the improved study habits will also improve test scores, compensating for the effect of less study time. Of course, like any design, the proof is in implementing the design, but until we have the idea, and think through the consequences, we really can’t set a clear goal and know what to expect if we can follow our plan to achieve it.