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“What fictions can do, regardless of how dystopian or utopian they may seem, is to identify how the interests of different people and different species conflict – as well as to highlight the areas of the Venn diagram where they do overlap.”1
The relationship between diagramming and facilitation is mutual. As much as diagramming can be enriched by careful facilitation, a practice of facilitation can adopt collective diagramming as a method of sharing various perspectives about an obscure system/institution. A diagram can embrace the political, economic, and cultural complexity and reveal the shared ground of perception where considerate conversation can begin among heterogeneous stakeholders.
In both cases of facilitation for diagramming, or diagramming for facilitation, the role of a designer becomes ambiguous with that of a facilitator, “to make it easy for people with shared intentions to be around each other and move towards their vision and value.”2 And this process will, in turn, be visible in a diagram through its nuances. When a diagram is drawn by a group of people around a table, there won’t be a singular direction through which it can be read. Negotiation in diagramming doesn’t mean homogenizing differences, but finding ways for those to coexist without excessive tension. A diagram that is carefully facilitated can therefore include various ideas, disciplines, languages and senses, no longer confined in boxes and lines drawn on paper.