Design as a form of Method Acting
A great post and follow-up discussions by Jeff Veen of Wired/AdaptivePath fame (like I need to tell you that) on his typical design effort/timeline.
- Talk to everybody I possibly can about the problem.
- Read everything that would even be remotely related to what I'm doing.
- Hang charts, graphs, diagrams, and screenshots all over my office.
- Observe user research; recall past research.
- Stew in it all, panic as deadline approaches, stop sleeping, stop eating.
- Be struck with an epiphany. Instantly see the solution. Curse my tools for being too slow as I frantically get it all down in a document.
- Sleep for three days.
Being trained in engineering, I've always been a fan of having a structured approach to software development, but with time and experience, I've realized that most of that 'structure stuff' exists as retrospective documentation to satisfy the non-creative stakeholders (ugh, I hate that work) in case something goes wrong. Writing software, or at least especially exceptional software, is closer to composing music than building a car. The real 'leveragable work product' often takes place at the extreme beginning (design) and ending (performance/execution 'hacks') of the project when the maximum creativity is applied in very nebulous and often impossible-to-deconstruct ways.
After days/weeks of 'stewing' things just click together and the problem finally speaks to you.
I wonder how generally applicable this pattern (ugh...is EVERYTHING a pattern these days) of effort applies to any creative endeavor.