EBlog
Quote of a Quoted Quote: How Design Works
September 12, 2006 | Posted by: Nicholas
Kottke quotes Michael Beirut’s post about the design process. I quote that here:
When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people - at least the ones I’ve told you about - have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know…trust me?
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Comments
by Jill
The entire article is pretty interesting. Read it on designobserver.com
by Lee
And that’s what we all “marketing”!!!
by Nicholas
As Jill said, the whole article is good, and it adds context to the above (obviously). For example, this is the paragraph that precedes the part I quoted above:
“The other day I was looking at a proposal for a project I finished a few months ago. The result, by my measure and by the client’s, was successful. But guess what? The process I so reassuringly put forward at the outset had almost nothing to do with the way the project actually went. What would happen, I wonder, if I actually told the truth about what happens in a design process?”
This post, despite it being in a blog called “Design Observer” is as much (or more) for the Sales and Project Management folks as anyone else at EB. Read it.