The System Above the Screen: Seeing Your Product from 10,000 Feet
Donovan Dynamics – Dimension Ten: Elevation
Most teams work from the ground level—screens, specs, sprints. But the most valuable insights often come from a higher vantage point: when you zoom out, connect the dots, and see how it all fits together.
In Donovan Dynamics, Elevation is the third and final dimension of Coordinates. It’s about perspective, clarity, and systems-level insight. While Longitude is about reach and Latitude is about structure, Elevation is about seeing the whole.
It’s the difference between building a feature… and understanding its role in the larger ecosystem.
Elevation Is the View from Above
Elevation shows up when you:
Zoom out to see user journeys across products
Map dependencies between teams or tools
Clarify where feedback loops begin and end
Refactor a system because the architecture no longer fits the mission
You don’t get Elevation from pushing pixels. You get it from stepping back.
Case Study: Facebook Pages Growth & Science
At Facebook, I worked with a team of computer science PhDs on the Pages Growth & Science initiative. This wasn’t about branding or UI polish. It was about recommendation architecture—how systems push content, shape visibility, and influence what millions of people see every day.
Elevation here meant:
Understanding the math behind reach
Seeing how small tweaks to logic had massive downstream effects
Aligning product design with algorithmic integrity
Knowing when to zoom in on a signal—and when to zoom out on the pattern
It wasn’t just systems thinking. It was systems sensing.
Where Elevation Shows Up in Design
Ecosystem-level mapping
Strategic roadmaps
Architecture refactoring
Pattern recognition
Cross-team coordination
Elevation lets you anticipate second-order effects before they show up as bugs or burnout.
Questions to Ask in the Elevation Dimension
What’s the bigger system this product exists within?
Where are the invisible feedback loops?
Are we solving a symptom—or designing at the source?
What would this look like from the user’s full journey—or from six months ahead?
Closing Thought: Zoom Out to Design Better
Elevation isn’t about getting lost in abstraction. It’s about stepping back far enough to see the story you’re really telling.
In Donovan Dynamics, Elevation gives you the view from the mountaintop—so you can design the trail, not just the next step.