There are many complex processes that take place in the world, most of which would be incredibly hard to explain using only words. People have a hard time expressing what is inside their minds, often causing miscommunications when trying to explain their ideas. This causes the person who is listening to this idea to receive a less efficient version of the process than what the original person knows. Now when they go explain the process to someone else using only words, the same thing will happen and the listener will gain a less efficient version of the process. This will continue to happen, basically creating a giant game of telephone, until somewhere far down the chain the process is almost completely different than what the person who came up with it intended. This leaves all of the different members of the company with a different idea of how to complete a task, which can cause many problems for obvious reasons. It is crucial for all members of a company to follow the same processes so that their tasks get completed. This is where diagrams are an absolute necessity.
The flowchart began to be used heavily in the 1930’s. The first industry to adopt widespread use of these diagrams was the industrial engineering field. The diagrams depicted the steps of different engineering processes so that all people involved in the process could have the same understanding of what needed to be done. With a proper guideline to follow, the processes became much more efficient, because the diagram could be analyzed and made to follow the most efficient steps to take in the process. However, before computers, analyzing and altering massive industrial flowcharts was a huge process in itself. Some of the flowcharts that were made for complex processes would have hundreds of steps and connections. Since they were written out by hand at this point in time, adding in a step, or changing an existing step, could completely change the way all of the connections worked in the diagram. The entire flowchart would often have to be remade to accommodate one extra step, since erasing and rewriting hundreds of lines and boxes made the diagram extremely messy. Now with modern technology, complex diagrams are much easier to create, alter, and store. This allows companies to rely more heavily on flowcharts for processes, maximizing efficiency. Multiple virtual copies of these charts are stored in databases, not on paper in files like they used to be. This means different people in the company can access them to understand the process better, and the entire operation can run much smoother. This ease of creating diagrams in the modern age has caused process charts to extend outside of just commercial use, and into the daily lives of people.
There is some sort of diagram on the internet for just about any sort of process imaginable. Here is the link to a site that shows a list of comedic flowcharts used for all sorts of different purposes. While the flowcharts on the website are obviously not very practical and are meant more as a joke than anything else, they can still actually be followed and ultimately do work. This just shows that truly anything in the daily lives of people can be represented as a diagram. Simple processes often do not need a diagram to make them more efficient, but they can still be made. If a person were to have a diagram for every process they forego in their day, with each diagram having the most efficient steps for completing the process, then the person would likely complete everything that they would have accomplished in half the time. Humans by nature do not follow the most efficient way of doing things. We are certainly capable of finding the most efficient way, and then following the diagram that explains it, however for most things in life we do not analyze processes for efficiency. Mapping out everything that a person does in diagrams would certainly make them accomplish their tasks quicker, but there would be no spontaneity, and ultimately that person would likely feel less human. While diagrams for large processes are extremely helpful, perhaps they should only be made at this larger level, because planning out simple processes in a person’s live can start to make living itself feel like a process, and that is something we certainly want to avoid.
Nick Bagley
Information Science 