OBEYA
See together. Decide together.
Collaboration and shared visibility. Related traditions: Twiza, Ubuntu, Harambee.
Design laws
- Information remains visible
- Ownership is explicit
- Progress is collaborative
- Large readable typography
- Decisions happen around the information
Constitution
The deterministic communication contract: these values are schema-enforced and validator-checked, not styling suggestions.
| narrative style | question-first |
| density | operational |
| annotation policy | minimal |
| legend policy | direct-labels-only |
| highlight policy | dual |
| decision style | options |
| reading time | glance |
| charts per page | 4 |
Occasions
stand-up boardssite wall printswar roomsA3 posters
Chrome
no kicker, no eyebrow; the title stands alone.
Palette
| Role | Hex |
|---|---|
| background | #FFFFFF |
| ink | #0F172A |
| body | #334155 |
| hairline | #64748B |
| gridline | #CBD5E1 |
| primary | #C2410C |
| muted | #64748B |
| positive | #1F7A4D |
| negative | #B91C1C |
Fonts
Display: 'Segoe UI',Arial,sans-serif, weight
700.
Body: 'Segoe UI',Arial,sans-serif, weight
600.
Voice
How a page in this language reads. The universal prose laws (FN-07) apply first, then this register. The validator checks that the block below obeys its own caps.
The spoken voice. OBEYA text is read at three meters, in a morning stand-up, by people wearing gloves. Write the way a good site lead talks: names, numbers, today. A line that cannot be said out loud to the person it concerns does not go on the wall.
- Use names, not roles.Ownership is the law of this language, and a name on a wall gets acted on.
- Keep the time words at today and this week.The board resets daily. Anything older belongs in SAGA.
- Write bullets, never paragraphs.Nobody reads a paragraph standing up.
- No past-tense storytelling.The stand-up is about the next 24 hours.
- No abbreviations that need decoding at distance.At three meters an abbreviation is wallpaper.
- Never write a count you have not counted."Several items" and "various stakeholders" name nothing and get assigned to nobody.
There are several outstanding items requiring attention from various stakeholders across the project.
Three blockers today. Crane permit: Nadia. Cable drums: contractor. Scaffold: Sam, Thursday.
The language in use
Six chart objects rendered from the same golden data as every other language. Only the token file differs.