I recently participated in one of those joint school-company training sessions. I will just call the company “Acme”, and state that they provide a large assortment of design tools that we all know and love. I was quite disappointed with it. I can deal with being shamelessly advertised to, but this event was particularly bad because “Acme” was trying to force me to use their tools in a certain way and telling me how I should think about my own design process. Scary stuff.
I only stayed for two hours, but what I got out of it was that “Acme” wanted me to know that they have created an entire design and development process for me. It just so happens that every single step in that process completely relies on “Acme” products. Additionally, the new software tool I was supposed to be learning was being presented as the solution to the visual/interface designer-developer communication gap. No mention was ever made about actually talking amongst designers and developers, including a wide range of people on your team, or cultivating an open and communicative attitude in your business. No, with this new software tool, as a designer you can keep thinking the developers are a bunch of nerds (this is what “Acme” actually said numerous times in the session), and just do your work and pass it along.
Despite all this there was still something even more sinister at work: they spent two hours talking about the tool before actually opening up the software and using it. This was to ensure that we thought about the tool “properly” before starting to use it. This is what bothered me the most about the session, and it got me thinking about all the tools that we use to design things. We as designers have the luxury to decide on our own how we will think about a tool, how we will fit it into our design process, and what our process looks like. I feel that in their efforts to force a process on us, companies like “Acme” are just reducing designers and developers to cogs in a machine.
Design is not a machine. No matter how much somebody wants it to be predictable and safe, it never will be. Design is messy. Design deals with wicked problems. Design involves judgment. This doesn’t sound so good considering everything that might be at stake with a design: time, money, safety, ideologies, etc. However, the most anyone can hope for is that designers use tools and choose processes deliberately and with designerly rigor.
On Tools and Process
I recently participated in one of those joint school-company training sessions. I will just call the company “Acme”, and state that they provide a large assortment of design tools that we all know and love. I was quite disappointed with it. I can deal with being shamelessly advertised to, but this event was particularly bad because “Acme” was trying to force me to use their tools in a certain way and telling me how I should think about my own design process. Scary stuff.
I only stayed for two hours, but what I got out of it was that “Acme” wanted me to know that they have created an entire design and development process for me. It just so happens that every single step in that process completely relies on “Acme” products. Additionally, the new software tool I was supposed to be learning was being presented as the solution to the visual/interface designer-developer communication gap. No mention was ever made about actually talking amongst designers and developers, including a wide range of people on your team, or cultivating an open and communicative attitude in your business. No, with this new software tool, as a designer you can keep thinking the developers are a bunch of nerds (this is what “Acme” actually said numerous times in the session), and just do your work and pass it along.
Despite all this there was still something even more sinister at work: they spent two hours talking about the tool before actually opening up the software and using it. This was to ensure that we thought about the tool “properly” before starting to use it. This is what bothered me the most about the session, and it got me thinking about all the tools that we use to design things. We as designers have the luxury to decide on our own how we will think about a tool, how we will fit it into our design process, and what our process looks like. I feel that in their efforts to force a process on us, companies like “Acme” are just reducing designers and developers to cogs in a machine.
Design is not a machine. No matter how much somebody wants it to be predictable and safe, it never will be. Design is messy. Design deals with wicked problems. Design involves judgment. This doesn’t sound so good considering everything that might be at stake with a design: time, money, safety, ideologies, etc. However, the most anyone can hope for is that designers use tools and choose processes deliberately and with designerly rigor.