Modeling for Clarity Workshop

Learn how to Solve Digital, Design, or Strategic Problems

In our Modeling for Clarity Workshop, you will learn a new skill and a better way to talk about and solve your digital design or strategic problems by creating clear and easily communicable pictures. You will gain the tools necessary to use your modeling skill productively on internal projects or with clients to bring clarity and alignment to your audience.

This workshop is for designers, strategists, managers, executives, or anyone who wants to level up their ability to communicate clearly with others while solving complex problems. Past attendees hail from a wide range of professions and business roles. We’ve had designers, artists, authors, researchers, business owners, executives, and everything in between. It doesn’t matter whether your work is physical or digital, tangible or conceptual—the framework you will learn will enable you to clarify and speak to complexity regardless of your role or industry.

By the end of the workshop, you will have new tools for bringing the clarity needed to solve complex problems for yourself and others. Investing as little as 12 hours of your time, you will learn a new framework and be on your way to improving every project you touch. Attend if you want to:

FORMAT

We designed MFC around a flipped classroom model. Prior to each session—at your own pace—you will view pre-recorded lectures. There are four weekly sessions for you to learn and connect with your cohort and instructor. Paired with each lecture is an activity for you to complete. During the workshop, you will:

• Watch the six (6) pre-recorded lectures at your own pace.

• Complete the six (6) activities paired with the lectures.

• Attend four (4) live 90-minute sessions for real-time interaction with the instructor and your cohort.

• Receive an online guide for each week’s resources with content to reference, ponder, and get curious about.

• Receive exclusive access to the TUG team and your workshop peers via a Slack channel for office hours, questions, clarifications, and fun.

The workshop is very hands-on, allowing you to produce models and then talk about your models with others using the Clear Modeling Framework introduced in the class.

The design and pacing of this workshop assume the learning happens between the other obligations and activities in your life. Participants should plan to spend 2-3 hours per week on self-paced work, then attend the ninety-minute (90) live session with the entire class.

SCHEDULE

WEEK 1: Intro to Modeling — You've likely heard the term “model,” but what does it mean for us and why do we bother making them? We explore this valuable practice, both in theory and through class exercises where everyone makes their first models for understanding.

WEEK 2: Making Models — We learn about the Model Program Phase, a planning tool that allows us to model more efficiently and have a clear criteria for when a model is “finished.” We then introduce the five steps of making any model and practice them as a group.

WEEK 3: Shared Modeling & Critique — We highlight key benefits of sharing a model, and talk about how models can be valuable for both the model-maker and for an audience possessing less context. We introduce Context Priming, a set of tactics for making a model more understandable and helpful for those who didn't create it.

WEEK 4: Model Critiquing — The Clear Modeling Framework is not only a tool for helping make good models, it also provides a framework for how to give clear targeted critique for other’s models. We’ll learn how to take our model-making skills and apply them to help critique and make others’ models more clear.