ushin

Tools for understanding and deliberation.

Understand

Focus on one point at a time
Support the main point
Consider different perspectives
- People’s views
- Kinds of meaning
- Influences and Effects

Deliberate

Organize relevant input from different perspectives
Adjust criteria to consider different results
Rank by merits by reasoned criteria
- Set your own criteria to rank merit
- Set your own weights and measures
- Share criteria and rankings

Purpose of the ushin method of deliberation

Structure communication for diverse perspectives
Let people gather and speak for ourselves about shared interests
Create an ongoing reference system toward meeting real needs
Focus on real needs, vetted facts, human feelings
Deliberate issues of importance, for example nonviolent options for healthy living
Bridge the divide between online and offline communication
Allow for users to set weights and measures specific to their issues
Evaluate merit with and without weighing popularity
Make a path to appropriate accountability systems
Prepare for and/or inform decision making
Protect the living against the emotional plague*

Ushin shapes

8 shapes represent 8 different kinds of meaning.

Hover the shapes to see what they typically represent.

Hover over the shapes below for questions to spark deliberation.

A list of feelings and needs is handy for finding the words to describe your personal experiences. Thoughts, facts, merits, people, actions, and topics are specific to your situation.

Examples

Offline
- Cards, charms, cross-hatch forms and other physical shapes help people to focus and share a full spectrum of points related to what we mean to express.
- For example, a pair of good friends are sitting on a park bench. On hearing her friend complain about someone else “lying” she pulls a set of 8 ushin cards. The complaining friend plays the feelings card first, declaring her outrage about someone, the fact card when describing an event that the two of them remember differently, the people card say what it could be from his perspective, the topic card brings up influences that might support someone’s memory or shine a different light on her own, and finally the thought card prompts her plan an apology for losing her temper and find out what was going on for the other person.
Online
- Ushin shapes offer an intuitive way to find, compare, judge and share points online.
- tag points so that people filter down to the facts about a debatable topic. Someone may want to start viewing just the facts, then analyses of those facts along with peers’ feelings about those analyses – using your own qualifiers.
- —> Medical example

Software Development – from here down the page is rough

See https://ushin.org for online prototypes testing P2P deliberation using ushin shapes.

u4u models the semantic screen, with these features:

Semantic screen
- Central main point
- Surrounding related points
- Easy shape tagging
- Shared merit

Peer graph
List of findings
Filters
- Now
  - shape, date, sources, topics
- Future feature
  - Peer group custom filters
    - Create a new filter using semscreen with custom labels
      - Peers and their networks could adopt those labels, create taxonomies related to topics of interest, with their own semantic rules, e.g. equivalents …
    - Example: Busy mom keeps track of and schedules family todo’s in Freeplane free open source mindmap software. Freeplane lets her customize tags to sort out her todo’s using her own icons. [image of Freeplane with icons for the categories, e.g. house, violin, car, dishes, broom …] She also used ushin tags, available within Freeplane, to communicate tag tasks with her upcoming events, facts, people and sometimes thoughts and feelings about tasks. [image with ushin tags, and sorting by icon] She copies information for the family to the apps they use most.
    - An interface with custom icons (instead of shapes) for creating, editing and viewing ushin semscreen regions could help this mom sort out and find todo’s more rapidly because she’d know where on the screen to file and find her points. Any calendar view, e.g. day screen, would display her same set of regions for her tasks, places to go, people … with higher ranked items prominent (top of list, bolder font…) [image of semscreen with custom icons in the semscreen regions, with different shapes] She could click on any one to see what relates to it, showing up in their regions. (There could be a parking lot for untagged snippets, or use the topic region]
  - Sharing filters among peers and groups

hyperdrive.el models ushin shape tagging and p2p file sharing using the emacs programming environment

Future architecture

The small team is discussing a novel way to share ushin shapes across the internet. This returns to a data model suggested by an early ushin enthusiast, Daniel Randall. He envisioned the shapes serving as a bridge among existing platforms. The team could build plugins to extend emacs, gitlab, facebook and other popular communication systems for users to read and write with ushin tools on our favorite communication platforms. Anyone could tag and annotate published text or media with ushin shapes. Users could pull together shapes and content from multiple different platforms, use the ushin app to coordinate and repackage and send out ushin points, even ongoing deliberations, to be read on other platforms.

This concept frees us from the limitations of building, maintaining and promoting yet another application as their “go to” communication home, instead we create a simple app fit for use with different communication systems.

Purpose of shapes

Shapes provide a structure for resolving personal, relationship, family, group and social issues.

Simplify and clarify basic kinds of meanings
Get to the point
Analyze information logically
Hear and be heard through shared meanings

Methods of deliberation

Allow for weights and measures to be specific to topics discussed
Structure communication to include diverse perspectives
Evaluate merit with and without weighing popularity

How it works

From face-to-face to online (and back again)

Face-to-face

ushin shape charms, cards, various designs prompt people to express themselves simply and completely, staying on point
f2f software in early design to link different groups

Online functions

Find information by
- key word search
- ushin tag
- any tag system your group uses
- general search filters
- search specific filters
- peer filters
Easy to understand meaning
- distinguish facts from feelings, for example
- groups set their own terms
- the display makes it easy to enter and change shapes
Easy to share information
Easy to rank points by their merit
Easy to see how others ranked points by merit
Easy to choose peers
Easy to hop out from those peers to their peers’ for more information
Find info shared among other peer networks by word of mouth or other social networking

Features

Tag points for their meanings

adding tags to create a digital public commons where we can meet around issues for understanding and deliberate actions in solidarity with each other.

The inspiration for ushin

Universal shared information, ushin, builds on Nonviolent Communication, NVC, a powerful method to clarify underlying human motivations and elicit compassionate connections and behaviors. Ushin shapes include kinds of meaning that may needlessly complicate interpersonal dialogue, yet are necessary for comprehensive understanding and deliberative action especially among groups of people and/or for complex issues.

NVC models 4 kinds of meaning:

Observations, or Facts, include what we each witness with our senses such as personal experience or journal articles we read. By owning what we observe we stand up for ourselves and in hearing others do the same we recognize assumptions and appreciate different truths in different experiences.

Feelings include all of the emotions such as mad, sad, glad, and scared and their infinite combinations and nuances.

Needs include physical, emotional, mental and spiritual conditions for human health. These are the core values of NVC, ones that all humans share, the recognition in each other being the key to compassion. Again, a list of needs is handy.

Requests, or Actions include what we want others, and sometimes ourselves, to do, specifically.

Lists of feelings and needs are handy for finding the words to describe internal, personal observations. Facts and requests are specific to your situation.

Ushin models 4 additional kinds of meaning:

Thoughts include attitudes, judgements and recommendations, as well as methods of reasoning, knowing and judging.

People include individuals, tribes, groups, nationalities, classes and all of humanity, among other categories.

Topics include related subjects to consider and honor separately.

Merit is a system of ranking and filtration.

A list of thoughts is handy for finding the words to describe your reasoning and judgement. People, Merits and Topics are specific to your situation.

No set rules

People and groups can adapt the card meanings and method of play however they want.

For example, a group counselor passed out a deck of 8 ushin cards, never seen by anyone beforehand. Even though the cards were cut in shapes there was no writing on them. Each person found something to say or express in a different way after gazing at a shape.

How to use ushin shapes in deliberation

Define topic of deliberation and subpoints.

Sort out points according to shape.

Give merits, or not, to points based on your own criterion for each shape.

Add and subtract subpoints based on those criteria.

Add support or alter understanding and judgment.

Brainstorm, refine, and reconsider and prioritize points as a group, tracking as you go.

move to future features

Merit – software features
- Rank merit of any point according to personal and collaborative filters
- Default structure so far has used
  - 8 shapes (7 shapes used at ushin.org to represent current feature)
  - users can rank published supporting points from 0-9 per shape
  - main point is an average of the supporting point ranking by other peers
  - peer networks self-organize and co-create filters, topics, tags and qualifiers, etc.
  - p2p networks tested, see https://ushin.org

Kinds of meanings

8 ushin shapes make it easy to organize and support main points when creating, and to judge information for oneself and collaboratively according to one’s own and group settings.

Used for personal, interpersonal, and group understanding and deliberation.

Offline
- Cards, charms, cross-hatch forms and other physical shapes help people to focus and share a full spectrum of points related to what we mean to express.
- For example, a pair of good friends are sitting on a park bench. On hearing her friend complain about someone else “lying” she pulls a set of 8 ushin cards. The complaining friend plays the feelings card first, declaring her outrage about someone, the fact card when describing an event that the two of them remember differently, the people card say what it could be from his perspective, the topic card brings up influences that might support someone’s memory or shine a different light on her own, and finally the thought card prompts her plan an apology for losing her temper and find out what was going on for the other person.
Online
- Ushin shapes offer an intuitive way to find, compare, judge and share points online.
- tag points so that people filter down to the facts about a debatable topic. Someone may want to start viewing just the facts, then analyses of those facts along with peers’ feelings about those analyses – using your own qualifiers.

Ushin shapes [widget with merits]

Hover the shapes to see what they typically represent.<style> .r{ font-size:18px; font-weight:bold; } .rr{ font-size:16px; } .just{ margin:auto; } .box{ width:700px; right:50%; background-color: #fff5ff; padding:10px; margin:10px; border-radius:2px; color:black; display: -webkit-flex; /* Safari */ -webkit-flex-direction: row-reverse; /* Safari 6.1+ */ flex-direction: column; overflow: auto; text-align:justify; font-size:14px; } .con{ width:700px; right:50%; color: #fff5ff; padding:10px; margin:10px; border-radius:2px; border: solid 1px #fff5ff; display: -webkit-flex; /* Safari */ -webkit-flex-direction: row-reverse; /* Safari 6.1+ */ flex-direction: column; overflow: auto; text-align:justify; font-size:14px; } .subcon{ // width:660px; right:50%; color: #fff5ff; padding:10px; margin:10px; border-radius:2px; border: solid 1px #fff5ff; display: -webkit-flex; /* Safari */ -webkit-flex-direction: row-reverse; /* Safari 6.1+ */ flex-direction: column; overflow: auto; text-align:justify; font-size:14px; } .subbox{ width:660px; right:50%; background-color: #fff5ff; padding:10px; margin:10px; border-radius:2px; color:black; display: -webkit-flex; /* Safari */ -webkit-flex-direction: row-reverse; /* Safari 6.1+ */ flex-direction: column; overflow: auto; text-align:justify; font-size:14px; } .subsubbox{ width:640px; right:50%; background-color: #fff5ff; padding:10px; margin:10px; border-radius:2px; color:black; display: -webkit-flex; /* Safari */ -webkit-flex-direction: row-reverse; /* Safari 6.1+ */ flex-direction: column; overflow: auto; text-align:justify; font-size:14px; } .j{ text-align:justify; } #sm{ top:20px; height:70px; z-index:10; -webkit-transition: all .5s; } .smlabel{ color:#9ea; border-radius:5px; border: solid 1px #9ea; text-align:center; font-size:18px; margin:10px; padding:10px; position:relative; top:50px; z-index:1; display:block; } #sectionbox{ background-color: #fff5ff; width:750px; padding:20px; margin:20px; border-radius:4px; box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #222; color:black; } .section{ width:100px; height:120px; background-color: #445044; padding:10px; margin:10px; border-radius:2px; color:white; display: -webkit-flex; /* Safari */ -webkit-flex-direction: row-reverse; /* Safari 6.1+ */ display: inline-flex; flex-direction: column; overflow: auto; } .section:hover{ background-color: #232; text-decoration: none; color:white; } .hov{ text-align:center; padding:4px; color:white; -webkit-transition: all .5s; -webkit-filter: none; } .hov:hover{ -webkit-filter: hue-rotate(180deg); filter: hue-rotate(180deg); } #semol{ //width:700px; right:50%; color: #fff5ff; padding:10px; margin:10px; border-radius:2px; border: solid 1px #fff5ff; background-color: #727c73; } #sem{ position:relative; max-width:400px; height:300px; } #merits{ position:absolute; left:150px; top:18px; width:100px; height:100px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/merits.png”); background-size: cover; } #actions{ position:absolute; right:20px; top:120px; width:80px; height:70px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/actions.png”); background-size: cover; } #people{ position:absolute; right:50px; top:40px; width:70px; height:75px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/people.png”); background-size: cover; } #topics{ position:absolute; right:80px; top:200px; width:70px; height:75px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/topics.png”); background-size: cover; } #needs{ position:absolute; left:160px; top:220px; width:80px; height:60px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/needs.png”); background-size: cover; } #thoughts{ position:absolute; left:21px; top:121px; width:80px; height:70px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/thoughts.png”); background-size: cover; } #facts{ position:absolute; left:50px; top:40px; width:70px; height:75px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/facts.png”); background-size: cover; } #feelings{ position:absolute; left:80px; top:200px; width:70px; height:75px; background: url(“/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/feelings.png”); background-size: cover; } .bttn{ color:#fff; background-color:#71967D; padding:5px; margin:10px; border-radius:4px; display: flex; text-decoration: none; } .bttn:hover{ background-color:#343; text-decoration: none; color:#fff; } .big{ font-size:24px; font-weight:bold; } .just { text-align: justify; } .just:after { content: “”; display: inline-block; width: 100%; </style> <div id=”semol”> <div class=”smlabel” id=”sm”> Hover over the shapes below for questions to spark deliberation. </div> <div id=”sem” style=”margin: 0 auto;”> <div id=”merits” class=”hov” onmouseover=”mOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> <div id=”thoughts” class=”hov” onmouseover=”oOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> <div id=”facts” class=”hov” onmouseover=”fOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> <div id=”feelings” class=”hov” onmouseover=”eOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> <div id=”actions” class=”hov” onmouseover=”aOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> <div id=”topics” class=”hov” onmouseover=”tOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> <div id=”people” class=”hov” onmouseover=”pOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> <div id=”needs” class=”hov” onmouseover=”nOver()” onmouseout=”out()”></div> </div> </div> <script> function hde() {document.getElementById(“sm”).style.color = “#fbd”;} function out() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “Hover over the shapes below for questions to spark deliberation.”;document.getElementById(“sm”).style.color = “#9ea”;} function mOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>MERITS:</b><br>Assess the value and impact of every point.”;hde();} function aOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>ACTIONS:</b><br>What can we do about this?”;hde();} function pOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>PEOPLE:</b><br>Who is involved and in what roles?”;hde();} function fOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>FACTS:</b><br>What happened? What is happening?”;hde();} function oOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>THOUGHTS:</b><br>What do you think about this?”;hde();} function eOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>FEELINGS:</b><br>How do you feel about this?”;hde();} function nOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>NEEDS:</b><br>What needs are met or not met by this?”;hde();} function tOver() {document.getElementById(“sm”).innerHTML = “<b>TOPICS:</b><br>What are related issues and influences?”;hde();} </script>

Software Development