Rich Pictures

A rich picture is a way to represent what we know about a messy situation - the issues, actors, problems, processes, relationships, conflicts and motivations - so that we can reason about these aspects. It is a graphical tool that addresses that state of uncertainty at the beginning of an exploration or inquiry when all we know that we are dealing with a problematic situation, and moves us to a state where we have identified one or more themes we want to address. Peter Checkland introduced rich pictures for use in the early stages of his Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), an approach that recognizes that problems do not exist separate from the people involved in them and appreciates the multiple viewpoints of those participants. Essentially, SSM attempts to understand human systems in a way that is meaningful to actors in that system. Rich pictures are tools to learn not only about the obvious facts of a situation, but also about abstract or emotional things like the social atmosphere among the actors.

Constructing A Rich Picture

Begin with large sheets of paper and lots of coloured pens, and then simply draw what you see happening. Draw all that you perceive as problematic or significant - emotions and relationships as well as groupings and connections of various sorts - using symbols and metaphors to represent the situation in a way that is explicit and understandable by others. A rich picture can cope with whatever chaotic mess of thoughts and perceptions flows onto the page. Rich pictures do not have a formal syntax, and different people take different approaches, but these general guidelines have emerged as being useful:

• Include structure. Structure refers to those parts of the situation which are slow to change and relatively stable. They may include things like organisational structure, geographic location, physical layout and all the people who are affected by the situation. Include only enough structure to allow you to record the process and concerns.
• Include process. Process refers to the transformations that go on within the structure. These transformations might be part of a flow of goods, documents, or data. Again, don’t capture all aspects of process; broad strokes suffice.
• Include concerns (Checkland calls these “issues”). Concerns captures a particular actor’s motivations for participating in the situation. The different motivations give rise to the different perspectives each actor has.
• Include yourselt. Make sure your roles and relationships in the situation are clear.

Sources: John Naughton, Soft Systems Analysis: An Introductory Guide, The Open University Press, 1984; Andrew Monk and Steve Howard, The Rich Picture: A Tool for Reasoning About Work Context, 1998.

Learning With Rich Pictures

Constructing rich pictures can reveal all sorts of questions and observations about the problem situation. The value of rich pictures becomes particularly clear when we share it with others, identifying different perceptions of and assumptions about what is going on. That is when we can see connections, dead-ends, possibilities and contradictions that we may have otherwise missed. It can be difficult to face other people’s often surprisingly different assumptions, because this exposes us to the demanding task of questioning our own. It can mean throwing away the solutions we thought we had, going back to the beginning and starting anew. Of course, that is often exactly what is needed at the start of a systemic inquiry.

More

• There are few rules for crafting rich pictures. So it helps to start with examples that others have created: Distance Learning Unit, A Pub, and a Digital Library System, Plant Nursery Operations, Knowledge Management, a web design consultancy, an information systems project, and a rich picture itself
• A Rich Picture About Rich Pictures walks you through the problem of representing a messy situation in a rich picture.
• An edited version of a conversation with Allan Berg, an OU instructor, who share his Energy Debate rich picture and in doing so explains how rich pictures are a personal device to exploring your own understanding. “The a rich picture is it triggers its debate.”
• Horan (2000) makes the point that rich pictures support deep learning. Deep learning approaches are characterised by an intention to seek meaning and relationships among areas of knowledge. Surface learning approaches, in contrast, seek merely to memorise and reproduce knowledge.
• In discussion the workplace, Monk and Howard (1998) note how flexible rich pictures are in that they integrate all kinds of information from a variety of sources. This is important because otherwise “it may be impossible to see the full process….Only by using a variety of situated and nonsituated techniques can the fullest account emerge, given the prevailing practical constraints [of time and resources].”