Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity

A couple of people have asked me for more materials related to the Community Orientations Spidergram activity. I have embedded them into some slides now up … Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity. [Edit June 2011 – here is an updated pdf of the activity! Spidergram Worksheet 2011 ]

Here is a hint I should have shared earlier. The “context” orientation is a bit odd on the spidergram. You need to decide if internal orientation is in the middle/exterior towards the outside or reversed. I tend to use internal towards the middle, but I realized my instructions weren’t so clear.

Another way to do it is to ignore the “context” spoke from an internal/external perspective and then do one layer on the spidergram around your internally focused activities. Then with a different color, do another layer on externally focused activities. I’ve done this with a few test cases and it quickly showed that some communities which have both internal and external contexts have very different internal and external activities.

11 thoughts on “Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity”

  1. Do all communities have both external/internal context?

    Also, wondering if have now have some patterns looking at diagrams over a diverse range of communities?

  2. Hi Nancy,

    I love the Spidergram approach you have taken because it very quickly gives a visual indication of how things are. The shape of the wheel that is created can help people focus on areas much quicker than if this sort of method wasn’t used.

    I am intrigued as to how the idea was first received and what the impact was once people embraced the concept.

    Hope you don’t mind if I “borrow” the idea for a project of my own.

    Regards

    Michael

    PS – Have you seen the “Wheel of Life” concept which has a similar process for reviewing where you are in different aspects of your life?

    1. Thanks, Michael, and you are borrowing from a long lineage! I was first introduced to spidergrams from a friend and colleague who brought it from her Native American heritage and “the four directions.” And yes, the Wheel of Life. The key for me was the idea of a) visualization between elements and b) the concept of where things are and where they are headed, vs some “right or wrong” goal. Does that make sense?

      Edit: forgot the last bit. The spidergram has been well received. Again, I think the visual stuff is POWERFUL, as you know with mind mapping.

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