October 2010

IRISS process map – visually documenting the journey through a collaborative project.

As part of Snook’s ongoing involvement with IRISS, we were asked to produce a piece of visual documentation that would take the reader through the process of one of their projects. Intended to be shown at exhibitions, this would be of quite a large scale and would need to show a complex, multi-channelled, collaborative approach as clean and simple as possible.

Snook met with IRISS to begin sketching out the project, the people involved and the milestones that would need to be recognised. We made initial plans and found that working to a linear, chronological ordering would work best, with the different contributors referenced in different colours. We then worked up the drawings needed to illustrate the different stages of the project, keeping the visual language clean with simple black and white line drawings.

We would like this form of documentation to play a part in many of our collaborative projects. It is a very good way to see the parts that people and groups play, and how projects come together – to understand how things have worked and to plan for future collaborations.