The Fog of Design: Five Lessons on the complexity of Practice
I have re-bumped into this paper written by Uday Gajendar. I especially like his five lessons, they still resonate:
- Lesson 1: Designers should be like ecologists, conscious of the integrated system of invisible consequences.
- Lesson 2: Asking the right questions driven by a set of conceptual frameworks can be more important than domain expertise itself.
- Lesson 3: Process documentation is vital, not just for "nice portfolios" but for recording decisions and rationale, capturing knowledge, and providing visual evidence during project reviews.
- Lesson 4: Design can be a challenge, but influencing non-design stakeholders to implement the desired solution is more difficult.
- Lesson 5: Design leadership has hidden dependencies upon peer designers, support engineers, even sales reps.
- 1.2.2009