Growth Mindset

When I was teaching, one of the major principles we emphasized was adopting a growth mindset when it comes to intelligence. Rather than believing that you're stuck at a certain level of intellectual capabilities, our school emphasized that intelligence is very much improvable through working to become fluent with new ideas and practices.

While the analogy is not perfect, I've been operating to some degree under the idea that whatever map our team produces will be a fixed product. But recently, two conversations have pushed me out of that way of thinking. The first is that I've been following a blog, Systems Daily, that provides guidance on designing processes for work and personal projects that will result in successful outcomes. The blog happens to be the brainchild of my cousin Lydia Martin, but this is not a case of me hyping family. The blog really works.

In a post from earlier this week, Lydia emphasizes the need to get out early versions of your product so that you can gain valuable feedback for use in improving the product as it grows. The "Minimum Viable Product" (or MVP as Lydia dubs it) should be launched as soon as possible, to make sure that the development process is moving in the right direction.

In a marriage of Lydia's theory and map-making practice, I spoked with Albert Ching and Stephen Kennedy at Urban Launchpad last week who emphasized the need to put out something, anything, as soon as possible. While they didn't use the words Minimum Viable Product, that was precisely what they were describing. There are so many ways to use the first version of a transit map as a data-gathering tool. Through online feedback and in-person focus groups, we can gain the ability to add or fix routes, include new stops, and enhance the interface. But none of that is possible without first launching an MVP.

I'm abandoning my old way of thinking in which I thought of this project in linear stages:

In favor of adopting a process that emphasizes multiple iterations of the map, with the early versions serving as the basis for gathering feedback and improving the map:

Redesigning a map is nothing to scoff at, so in planning the first version, we need to be aware that more routes and stops will join the party, and that others will most likely drop out. Nonetheless, the idea of growing the map removes more challenges than it presents as it allows us to move towards a product launch quickly, and helps make sure the final map is as useful as it can be to bus riders in the city.