Eiffel Over

Tag: DesignProcess

  • Design versus Shopping

    If the client knows exactly what they want at the start of a design process, then it isn’t design – it’s shopping. Shopping for the answer that you’ve already decided upon. Because design isn’t the business of dealing with knowns. It is precisely because there are unknowns that we need a design process. 

    By all means we should have an initial brief that describes outcomes we are trying to reach. And then begins a journey into realm of unknown possibilities and constraints to find out what might be possible. What we may discover is that that original statement of intent was not quite right. We might find something based on a better understanding of the situation. 

    And then we get a better brief. Better for everyone involved, including the client.

    Consider the opposite. The client sets a tightly defined brief with highly specified outcomes. The designer is forced to the client’s exacting brief, tantamount to a shopping list (and which has probably become formalised as a contract). The designer discovers a better solution but because it is not on the client’s shopping list, it isn’t considered. 

    And so the client comes back from the shops with what they asked for. But there is no guarantee they are going to fit.

  • Mindset leverage

    Are you excited about the possibilities of your next project? Or worried about the unknowns? Do you see the possibility for competition or collaboration?

    There is not a part of design that mindset does not affect. That is because design is an interaction between the outer world of reality and the inner world of perception, imagination and choice.

    For me, our mindset is how we see the world – how it shows up for us. Our mindset affects what we look for and what we see when we gather data. It affects the sort of ideas we have. It affects what we hold important when we evaluate options. 

    So if we want to change the outcomes of our work as designers, there is merit in considering mindsets. Both the mindsets we bring and the mindsets we create through the processes we set up. 

    We shape our individual mindsets through reflective practice. We shape our collective mindsets through changing the working culture. These are invisible tools with huge leverage.

  • Start with your scales

    I was taught to start my music practice by playing my scales. Starting with your scales:

    • Grounds you in the practice. The basic relationship between you and the instrument and the sound you can make
    • Reinforces and enhances the automatic movements that become how you play.
    • Takes you through the full range of motions of play.
    • Removes the barrier to knowing where to start because where to start is always the same. You pick up your instrument, you play a scale and you have begun.

    Starting with your scales doesn’t just apply to instruments. It applies to any work where you develop a practice, be that a practice of design, facilitation or performance. 

    In the technique I call Professional Palette in my conceptual design training, I encourage participants to warm up to a design exercise by quickly drawing through all the common typologies for the project they are working on.

    It applies whether you are designing a bridge span, an investigation, a workshop or a dance performance. 

    Make it your default to start with your scales: go through the range of motions, get all the pens out and put them on the table, familiarise yourself with the full breadth of your tools, and then begin.