Calvin, rapid prototyper

[](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2015/01/26)

Sending out the dogs

“Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey” – [Werner Herzog](http://kottke.org/15/01/24-pieces-of-life-advice-from-werner-herzog)

True of ideas and designs as well.

Why designers shouldn’t be smart

Recently [Bruce Mau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Mau) came to our office (I know, right?!). Bruce is known for his writing, including several “manifestos” over the years, and he asked everyone in the room to write their own manifesto in 3 minutes (he said he used to give people 6 minutes and they were all finished early).

The first line in my manifesto was “Be the dumbest person in the room”, which got a laugh from Bruce and prompted some followup questions from people around me. I’d written it as a bit of a lark, but the more I think about it, the more important I think it is. So why is it important for a designer to be the dumbest person in the room?

First, of course, it means that you’re always around people you can learn from. Great design is based on collecting insights from the world. If you are the expert in the room, where will you get your new insights? Always surround yourself with people whose experience and knowledge exceeds your own in important ways.

Being dumb also keeps you humble. Every designer knows how it feels to watch someone try and fail to use your design. The biggest temptation in that moment is to tell yourself “that’s just one person, and really this test isn’t representative,” and write off their experience as a fluke. After all, didn’t Steve Jobs ignore his customers? ([Nope](http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2013/12/19/myth-busted-steve-jobs-did-listen-to-customers/), and [NOPE](http://zurb.com/article/588/hiding-in-the-bushes-with-steve-jobs)). But [Henry Ford did, to poor results](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5294)). Your confidence has to come not from your own opinions, but from the success real people have with your product.

Finally, when designers rely too much on their own experience and knowledge, they get lazy. When I’ve worked on a problem for a long time, and feel like I know it well, I’m less likely to do the research legwork needed for inspiration, less likely to ask other people their thoughts, and more likely to settle on the first idea that comes to mind. Conversely, a brand new problem forces me to start from scratch, with eyes and mind wide open to new possibilities (the next line in my 3-minute manifesto read: “When you get too good, start over”).

So really, the problem isn’t with *being* smart–it’s ok to get good grades, kids–but with *acting* smart. The best designers I know approach problems with the openness, humility, and excitement of a child seeing something for the first time. They acknowledge and work against their biases, and never let their intelligence get in the way of the right answer.

Utopia and its discontents

I’m a huge fan of Neal Stephenson, and also of his newest project [Hieroglyph](http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/), which aims to inspire future scientific breakthroughs with optimistic near-future science fiction. But I found two critiques of the approach quite compelling this week.

First, Virginia Postrel (whose writing on design I’ve enjoyed in the past), writes that “[Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-08/peter-thiel-is-wrong-about-the-future)” (I’m reading his book as well), and mentions Hieroglyph as similarly misled:

> The dystopian science fiction Stephenson’s Project Hieroglyph aims to counter isn’t the cause of our cultural malaise. It’s a symptom. The obstacle to more technological ambitions isn’t our idea of the future. It’s how we think about the present and the past…

> The reason mid-20th-century Americans were optimistic about the future wasn’t that science-fiction writers told cool stories about space travel…*People believed the future would be better than the present because they believed the present was better than the past*. They constantly heard stories — not speculative, futuristic stories but news stories, fashion stories, real-estate stories, medical stories — that reinforced this belief.

It’s the same ambivalence toward today’s progress that [Louis CK rails about](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E), and that [many science fiction writers and futurists recognize](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5326). We do live in amazing times, yet the dominant cultural reaction is frustration and dissatisfaction. We don’t often celebrate the incredible progress we’ve achieved. As [David Brooks once wrote](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=481), “Americans have always been united less by a shared past than by the shared dream of a better future.”

The Guardian also [confronts the Hieroglyph collection](http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/oct/10/science-fiction-utopia-wilful-ignorance), calling the stories “built on willful ignorance”:

> But there is also a deliberate naivety to Project Hieroglyph. Stories such as Cory Doctorow’s The Man Who Sold the Moon are a veritable hymn to the culture of Silicon Valley and tech start-ups, but deftly wave away the part these cultures play in today’s corporate capitalism and all the inequalities that come with it.

I agree with their assessment of the best stories:

> The best contributions to Hieroglyph are the least optimistic, and the best attuned to the human reality that technology so often obscures. Entanglement by Vandana Singh and Madeline Ashby’s By the Time We Get to Arizona both look at the impact of new technologies in developing nations and among the world’s poorest people. They also tackle the obvious problem of technological innovation, the looming menace of climate change, environmental degradation and resource depletion that go hand in hand with new technologies.

I still believe there is a role for optimistic science fiction in changing the world. However it’s always good to be mindful of the present and past when thinking about the future, and to include messy and uncomfortable situations in even the most polished vision. The real future will be both based in today’s world and include a lot of today’s problems, and people are wise enough to recognize when those aspects are missing from stories about the future.

Think small

[A nice example of thinking small first](http://blog.fastmonkeys.com/2014/06/18/minimum-viable-product-your-ultimate-guide-to-mvp-great-examples/), similar to [Brandon Schauer’s Cake model](http://brandonschauer.com/post/3309932285/more-on-the-little-secret-to-product-planning-cupcakes).

Solving the right problems

> Design is about solving problems that humans have, not problems that products have. – [Mills Baker](http://mokriya.quora.com/Designer-Duds-Losing-Our-Seat-at-the-Table)

I’ve referenced this quote several times since reading it; this is harder to do than you might think.

The boring future

> One of the defining challenges of writing science fiction is explaining to the audience the amazing new things in this world while respecting the fact that the characters already live in that world… For you, this future is cool, but for them it’s just another day with the same old problems.

– [John Scalzi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi), speaking at Google

See also Jamais Cascio, “[Your Posthumanism Is Boring Me](http://io9.com/5533833/your-posthumanism-is-boring-me)” and “[Fifteen Minutes Into the Future](http://www.openthefuture.com/2008/05/fifteen_minutes_into_the_futur.html)”, and Stuart Candy, “[Amazing=Mundane](http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/amazing-mundane.html)”.

Product design and your impact

I’ve written before about [how I think about and talk about design](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=4367). While in general I find it important to be specific about the practice you’re doing, there are some broader definitions that are useful.

One that occurred to me this morning: *The first act of product design is deciding what effect you want to have in the world.*

This definition sidesteps [the distinction between solving problems and cultural impact](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=4126), and focuses not on the product but on the opportunity.

We live in a fascinating time, where with [new](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone) [tools](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing) we have the power to build almost anything. Meanwhile, design practice is emerging in many disciplines and fields. The question is then less about “what should we build” and more about “why should we build?” Make sure you know your answer.

Faster horses and tone-deaf designers

> If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse – Henry Ford (allegedly)

This quote has always bothered me. Not only is it dismissive of customer input, but I’ve seen it misused terribly by a wide range of people, who cite it as an excuse to ignore other people and design whatever they want. So it was with great delight that I found [this marvelous debunking of the “quote”](http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast/) and the philosophy behind it.

> Let me dispel with the suspense; it doesn’t appear that Henry Ford ever actually uttered this famous and polarizing phrase. We have no evidence that Ford ever said those words…

> However, even if Ford didn’t verbalize his thoughts on customers’ ostensible inability to communicate their unmet needs for innovative products — history indicates that Henry Ford most certainly did think along those lines — his tone-deafness to customers’ needs (explicit or implicit), had a very costly and negative impact on the Ford Motor Company’s investors, employees, and customers.

The impossible and the improbable

Some good guidance on which technique to use depending on what you want to say:

> It’s been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction the improbable made possible; fantasy the impossible made probable. – [Rod Serling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fk3IB9uF7A&t=3m40s)