Universal shared information, “ushin”

Tools for understanding and deliberation.

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.

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.

Using ushin shapes

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

• 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.
    • Facilitators can organize group conversation with shape cards, seeing a show of shapes and popcorning comments based on their kinds of meanings.
    • A researcher uses shapes to organize facts with associated analysis and theory, and people quoted, cited, or in a bucketlist of people to interview and topics to discuss, as well as specific actions related to the process of research in addition to managing content.
    • A city council member organizes a meeting about a local issue using a table-top ushin method. The topic is placed in the center, and around the edges and corners are the papers and pencils, and possibly also input boxes by shape to collate types of input. A discussion would follow in response to the various input.
• 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.
  • The diagnosis of Osteoporosis was one of the first examples testing the ushin method of sharing information. The open network would include various kinds of practitioners and a spectrum of topics, such as diet, exercise, hormones as well as prescription and non-prescription factors, from different perspectives. People would enter their own information – stripped of their identifiers – so that others could see what people are doing that helps, and practitioners would also benefit from a wide-angle view of options, and gain clientele attracted to methods they recommended.
  • The city council member above could begin a deliberation about any issue online using an app with ushin tags, merit calculations and peer-based qualifiers and filters.

Software Development

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

u4u models the semantic screen, with minimum features.

Application features of the ushin method

• Semantic screen
  • Central main point
  • Surrounding related points
  • Easy shape tagging
  • Shared merit (future)

• Peer graph
• List of findings
• Filters
  • see u4u.io for example filters:
    • shape, date, sources, topics

Future features

• Custom filters for users and groups related to their content.

• Create a new filter using custom layout, +/-semscreen, with custom labels and placements
• For example a vendor could list buttons giving users options as on their website menu. In semscreen view users would find vendor’s options on the outside rim, that the vendor controls. The vendor curates the information seen within its defined perimeter.
• Beyond the vendor rim(s) the outermost rim contains the ushin shapes and links to options from others beyond the vendor. It is these shapes that are shared among platforms open to sharing ushin deliberations by displaying their custom ushin icons with the outer ushin rim for people to escape current data curations.
• Filters and custom icons could also show as a custom styled rim, in the periphery within the ushin outer rim.
• Peers and their networks could adopt labels, qualifying terms and create taxonomies related to topics of interest, with their own semantic rules, e.g. equivalents …
  • For example, deliberations about diagnosing a specific illness among its related medical specialty group would use terminology specific to their expertise. A synonym filter created by a public group of peers sharing their personal and family experiences with that illness could make the discussions available to lay readers.

• Plug-ins, add-ons for existing apps
  • 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.
• A calendar app shows a floating ushin icon +/- user’s custom icons. When tapped it enlarges, or if large enough show user’s chosen tagged data in one click. The combination of selected icons narrows results of context and for reading and scrolling.
  • Click any icon adjusts the se
• Users could share filters among peers and groups by viewing them on a list as results were displayed in u4u.io. Distinctions and other edges (relationships and connections) between (? and among) filters could be labeled, tagged and ushered as part of deliberation.
• Annotation tools with ushin shapes let users markup selected content , such as highlit text, with ushin shapes and other custom icons. Tagged snippets could be shared between platforms offering ushin tool extensions.

Layout ideas

• Keep semscreen behavior, results list, input and author fields as with u4u. The semscreen sorts all snippets of information into 8 shapes represented by 8 regions of the display, delineated by a # [hash symbol] with the center region showing a main point and the surrounding points each placed in a region according to its tags. These locations by default are the same as on the ushin icon.
• The ushin icon can float over backgrounds and be clicked for users to tag selected text or objects with ushin tags.
• Include merit region for published input.
• While viewing one’s own drafts, and reading published results with merit view hidden the mid upper region offers displays:
  • results list
  • session history
  • related topics
  • settings
    • rankings
    • qualifiers
    • peer groups
• The ushin interface could include custom icons (in addition to shapes). Users would have the ushin tools for creating, editing and viewing input with more categories of organization. Once users pick an icon and region for their categories they’ll know where to file life’s snippets, and make it easy to find them.
• Custom ushin tools could help people rank tasks and see priorities prominantly. Once people pick a region, and perhaps also a color +/- custom icon it will be quick to find todo’s more rapidly according to one’s own sense of placement. Filing could be as simple as dragging an icon. For example an uncle sees his neice’s “Come to my party” snippet tagged with an action shape – showing up in his email. The uncle drops the todo onto his calendar which opens not just the other actions scheduled for that day that the uncle can re-rank and shuffle for time slots or priority size in user’s screen regions.
• As shown in expand regions to quickly find her points.
• [image of semscreen with custom icons in the semscreen regions, with different shapes]
• She could click on any icon to see what relates to it, showing up in their regions.
• Priorities show up with highest ranked items prominent
  • semscreen center for top pick
  • top of list on right
  • larger in tag cloud or 3D views
• Results and semscreen display changes hydraulically with changing criteria by text, shapes and icons
• Parking lot, below semscreen by default, for untagged snippets, if no topic region fits.
• New topics by default display in center of the semscreen in the largest window, and also at the top of the list on the right.
• Users view and edit general settings separately from and on-the-run selected filters, shapes and key text
• Users customize the terms as well as the ranking of each list using sliders
• Default filters from USHIN, Inc. include recency, merit based on expectation of meeting needs and exclude popularity as metric for merit ranking
• User can set a shape, for example feelings of a select peer group to be a primary view for a topic, for example an historical or current event.
• Users determine what options and views they prefer to access easily in the mid-top screen region of the semantic screen. Display options include
  • Semscreen window large with marginal list view, see u4u
  • Merit region for options, map and open into large display of focus
    • given that the merit region has no input for a draft, unpublished semscreen
      • people only give merit to published input, including one’s own
  • Navigation view, from top down:
    • merit shape top center, flanked by source files to the right, buttons to the left (view,
    • input box with “find” prompt greyed out italics and ushin icon for filters given shape
    • row of topics with floating icon of shapes appearing when hovering the right side of this row of related similar shapes, or “shape row” (separate from the list button, topping the right “list” column with similar other shape options)
    • left margin: view, history, saved input
    • right margin: list view with input “find” box, and
    • below: parked shapes (software requires a shape to save input, forces the training to discern meaning)

Future architecture

The small team is discussing the use of commonly used software plugins, add-ons, extensions, iterations, that share ushin shapes across the internet. By passing input with ushin tags other platforms may be able to display the input and an ushin icon, in addition to their own custom icons. The shapes would bridge existing platforms for snippets of text, with links. They would extend emacs, gitlab, facebook and other popular communication systems for users to read and write with ushin tools and share input among communication platforms. Anyone could tag and annotate published text or media with ushin shapes and share those tags, and snippets of text linking to the media or other input from the original source. 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 model batch app fit for use with different communication systems.

A mature ushin app would help people:

• share findings and filters
• create and edit weights and measures for chosen topics
• display findings in novel ways
• control what shows up by one’s own criteria and priorities
• view ushin findings alongside other browser search results
• changing the focus regions changes the other rows, margins and rims related to that center in semscreen view
• outer rims, beyond the margins, will hold only 8 buttons – the shapes in the borders of their regions
• …?

Ethical concerns of deliberation methodology

• Awareness of, access to and inclusion of the full population, as interested
• Allow for weights and measures to be specific to topics discussed
• Structure communication to include diverse perspectives
• Evaluate merit with and without weighing popularity
• Terms disambiguated and translated
• Merit
• Offline systems integrated
• Decentralized structure
• Users and groups can develop their own
  • icons
  • terminologies
  • priorities and ranking system
  • qualifiers
  • filters
  • ways to block and promote peers, shapes and icons
  • styling for display of one’s banner and icons

Challenges

• Reach developers and supporters with the ushin concept and work to date
• Develop a working deliberation platform that may integrate dissimilar platforms
• Develop the tools in a timely fashion while internet frontiers are still available.
• Relay visions that are unique and suggestive of testing humanity’s metal.

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

• Please see https://ushin.org for examples of applications so far
• Future features are pending.

Shapes categorize kinds of meanings to make it easy to

• Sort information by what its kind of meaning
  • For example, snippets of text could be sorted by a shape, that is by what kind of information it shares – a fact, a feeling..;
• Focus on one thing a time in context
  • each object would be the sole object on center where it is displayed in context of other shapes that surround it, with other input available marginally;
• Compare one kind of information at a time
  • View a variety of thoughts or facts or feelings, as examples, isolated from the other related kinds of information about the input;
• View input about something from different angles
  • For example one can view a variety of thoughts about someone else’s feeling related to a third person’s suggested action that had been linked to a fourth person’s relationship to a fact…
• Filter out studies with small numbers and prioritize results from multiple reknowned institutions, or vice versa.
• Toggle different opinions among different groups, or times, or analysis of need being met and by whom.
• Show up
  • By default the system minimizes the popularity effect by delivering input according to the user’s filters, and selected shapes, icons and key words, and user’s inclusion and ranking of qualifiers, such as dates, +/- rankings of peer group(s) included … Since information is displayed with fully transparent and editable algorithm users’ findings helps a greater variety of results.

Find information by

• Key word search
• ushin tag for kind of meaning of a text snippet
• any tag system user’s choice of
  • user’s tags and rankings and qualifiers
  • user’s peer(s) use(s)
• general search filters
• search specific filters

Tags

• custom icons and ushin shapes clarify points for understanding

• ushin shapes distinguish facts from feelings, for example

• groups set their own terms, synonyms and disambiguation
• help narrow findings to more specifically relevant results

Won’t tagging slow people down?

Yes, that’s an advantage with deliberation. The system prompts users to consider their input from various perspectives, say what they mean and be open to consider alternative opinions.

The ushin semantic screen, semscreen, makes it relatively quick to tag input by simply typing with a region of the screen, and change to another tag by a single tap. For example, see u4u.io

Once people receive tagged information the main point will be up front and center along with what’s important about it. Complex messages will be laid out for people to enjoy full understanding.Other features of the system will compensate for the encumbrance of thinking through what one publishes, for it will be quick for users to:

• find input from peers they’ve chosen
• share their original input and replies to what others published
• set and view merit values according to one’s own qualifiers and rankings
• see how others ranked points by one’s own =/- others’ merit settings
• expand peer groups to include one’s peers’ peers
• get more results by hopping out from those peers to their peers’ input
• connect with others around shared interests and varied perspectives
• determine a course of action that has merit toward meeting urgent needs

How do people find ushin-tagged info, or peer groups?

• Find info shared among other peer networks by word of mouth or other social networking
• The first time someone gets a link it would be through another platform like email or social media, or a thumbdrive, device or online file sharing systems…
• Discovery is a topic for active deliberation

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

Any iteration of ushin is adapted to its users’ necessity and creativity.

For example, the ushin widget on this page, downloaded and placed on a marriage counselor’s website could be one of the counselor’s recommended tools. Clients can be assigned a topic for purposes of mutual understanding.

More sophisticated iterations in the future could be helpful for family deliberations. One family might decide to publish all of a grandmothers heirlooms to the extended family without hierarchy and another might deliberate specifics within a sibling group before opening up the topics and items to a greater circle.

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. They reported expressing ideas in a new way.

Solo ushering can offer insights about one’s own behavior, relationships with individuals, understanding about causes and conditions related to feelings, analyses of behavior related to handling triggers and plan doable actions which are more wholesome for themselves and their family members, as discerned from viewing different perspectives on shared experiences.

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.

The potential to qualify and quantify merit

• Merit – software features in early design
  • Users and groups 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 file sharing tested for ushin, see https://ushin.org

————————- above edited 7-27-25 ———————————————-

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.

• Ability to use ushin tools and shapes in common platforms and websites to

Offline functions for ushin-tagged input

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

• Simplify, clarify and emphasize basic meanings
• Get to the point
• Analyze information logically
• Hear and be heard through shared meanings

Online functions for ushin-tagged input

• Find information by
  • key word search
  • tags that show a point’s kind of meaning
  • any tag system your group uses
  • general search filters
  • search specific filters
  • peer filters
  • peer network and subgroup
• Grok meaning
  • prominent main point
  • shape tag shows what kind of point was intended
  • skim support points organized by region
  • flip through peers’ similar shapes related to the point
  • sort facts from feelings from recommended actions …
  • see the message in context
    • by surrounding related points
    • by search history of one’s own findings
    • by search history of author’s findings if packaged with the message
• Rank points by their merit
  • compare similar kinds of messages, for example facts or feelings …
  • set general preferences for findings (customize, default and peer filters)
  • change own and peer filters on the go
  • see how others ranked points by merit
  • compare perspectives by toggling between filters, shapes, sources …
  • change peer groups currently sourced
  • choose only peers you know or hop out from those peers to their peers’ peers …
  • find info shared among other peer networks by word of mouth or other social networking
• Share responses
  • select the main or subpoint to connect your reply
  • type into the semantic screen regions to tag supporting points
  • select a main point to publish
  • package with attachments, filters, findings lists, peer groups …
  • all that with prior semscreen in view on rim or above
  • make sets of filters, published input, and peers available for others
  • see your main point with edge (line) to the prior main point, in context of other related points
• Deliberate
  • Any person can start gathering input from others about an issue by publishing original input and sharing it with their peers, who then can share it with their peers, etc. People participating in a growing digital public commons can also set times and places to connect with other locals and deliberate in person.

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. As with NVC, there is no need for comprehensive tools for trivial or simple, where ushin shapes may needlessly complicate interpersonal dialogue. These tools for comprehensive understanding and deliberative action are designed when dialogue is difficult, includes polar information, or among groups of people who otherwise have trouble finding common ground around 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

Functions of prior software may be seen at https://ushin.org and feature requests will be posted on this site.

• FIND POINTS
  • Peers can view facts, even contradictory facts alongside any published evidence to support them. Peers can expand related topics to explore alternate perspectives to inform one’s own thinking about actions that are likely to meet basic needs.
• FILTER POINTS
  • For example, one may filter out feelings and people in order to judge findings on their own merits rather than by emotion, popularity or somebody else’s opinion.
• COMPARE POINTS
  • In addition to comparing input by key words and phrases one could compare only facts on display side by side, for example, or by ranked order.
• CREATE POINTS
  • Set a focus of deliberation
  • Enter text in regions or tag text with shapes
  • Edit sub- and main points
  • Deliver your main point and its supporting points
  • Attach or cite bases of facts
• EVALUATE POINTS
  • Add and subtract merit to points deliberated criteria.based on your own filters
  • View qualifiers to select and potentially create one’s own for one’s peers
  • Assess the logic of arguments and merit judgments.
  • Represent all relevant perspectives of your choice.
• UPDATE
  • Update saved input with new points as they are discovered or become relevant.

Deliberation with rational discernment

Determine sincerity by context.

• For example a person may be qualified by their relationships and actions, and/or how these points are deliberated and qualified by one’s own peers.

• “The living, in its social and human interrelationships, is naively kindly and thus, under prevailing conditions, endangered… The kindly individual believe that all people are kindly and act accordingly. The plague individual believes that all people lie, swindle, steal and crave power. .. Granted equal right in the expression of opinion, the rational finally must win out. This is an important hope.” – Wilhelm Reich, intro Listen, Little Man!