The Shape of Work: a notation for the work we deliver
A visual notation that draws a piece of work — a project, a role, a case — as a shape in a three-axis space, so one case can be read at a glance and many can be compared side by side.
Prose makes cases hard to compare. A shape does not.
I treat my own career as a series of case studies, and I want the lessons to accumulate into something reasoned rather than a pile of disconnected presentations. Comparison is what turns cases into a body of work, and comparison is far easier to do visually than in prose.
I think visually. The open question underneath this is whether visual reasoning can be made explicit enough to be shared — and, eventually, computed on.
- Version
- 0.1
- First published
- 5 Sept 2026
- Author
- M. Alejandro Marin
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
Directly perceivable things — a page, a poster, a house.
Concepts that bundle concrete items — funnels, tactical work.
Work that takes expertise to unpack — strategy, information architecture.
One element.
A couple of key elements held together.
Several elements, where timing becomes systemic.
One person, a reasonable timeframe.
A few people, an adequate duration.
Multiple people, multiple cycles.
Scale is the axis I am least happy with. It is the one most likely to change in v0.2.
Environment
The space the case sits in. Uncharacterised by default — it is the ground, not a claim.
Vehicle
A triangle marking who did the work. Ink for the practitioner, orange for collaborators.
Interface
A teal plane marking what was delivered — the surface the work presents to the world.
- 01
Score one case across the three axes.
- 02
Draw the space, and position the markers against those scores.
- 03
Place the vehicle triangle for yourself, and the interface plane for what you delivered.
- 04
Add collaborator triangles for everyone else who moved the work.
- 05
Put several cases side by side, and read the difference.
Every diagram here is drawn by hand.
The underlying cases stay private.
One person has used it. That person is me.
Near term: score more cases, test whether two raters score the same case the same way, and rework Scale.
Far term: a notation that places work in a navigable space is also a candidate representation for visual reasoning.
Marin, M. A. (2026). The Shape of Work: a notation for the work we deliver, v0.1. AlejandroMarin.design, 5 September 2026.
- Garrett — The Elements of User Experience
- Jaques — Stratified Systems Theory
- Snowden — Cynefin
- Means-end chain analysis