I own a patchwork blanket that was gifted to me by my mom. I have found patchwork artifacts to be very visually and aesthetically pleasing and inherently fascinating. All the patterns that individually flow in a direction of their own, come together to make something complete and layered. Ever since, I have had the patchwork blanket, regular blankets have become fairly boring.

Mapping tools (of any sort - stakeholder, concept, affinity, system) have always been a part of my toolkit as a designer. Each a very solid method or framework that if done based on information rooted in research will help in synthesis and sense-making. Or even better → it may help in creation of new knowledge. The assemblage mapping activity was an additional layer to analyze and one which allows for an easy shift in gaze form one group to another.

We started out mapping the process of how an iPhone 13 reached the shelf, backwards. Very soon we found out two distinct geographies in our maps → “the logistics” which would probably be outsourced by the company and “the making” of the product which is an in-house activity. There is a very clear power imbalance here and it would be interesting to look at the entire system from the gaze of the third party vendors.

An unapologetically messy assemblage map using iPhone 13 (the product) as the point of departure.

However, after the mapping got over, I was finding it a little hard to shift the “point of departure” to another area on the map. The question that perhaps held me back was - “Why would I choose a new point of departure?”. Was it just to understand the power dynamics? Or get a better look at the system from a different point of view? But for that to happen, do I even know enough about that point of view?

However all these unanswered questions, I think naturally led me to a place where I would want to answer them one by one and add more texture to my map as I uncover new connections.