Tools
All sorts of ways to use the machine
Stretching the product
The reflective craftsman
The inventive process was often a nonverbal one
Maybe I should sharpen soon
When our tools are broken, we feel broken
In his piece [for Time] Lev Grossman correctly noted that the iPhone did not really invent many new features, it just made those features a lot more usable. "But that's important. When our tools don't work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers...When our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole."
A minimum size to fish
There is the famous story by Eddington about some people who went fishing in the sea with a net. Upon examining the size of the fish they had caught, they decided there was a minimum size to the fish in the sea! Their conclusion arose from the tool used and not from reality.
You can almost tell which software they were designed in
Tatiana von Preussen, cofounder of London practice vPPR Architects, says that certain software comes with constraints that encourage a particular style:
“Something I’ve noticed with new buildings is that you can almost tell which software they were designed in. For instance, if you take Revit, it’s very hard to freely create non-orthogonal, non-linear geometries, and it’s very easy to create repetitive elements, so it lends itself to a particular way of building.”
So insufficiently palimpsestic
I worry that unlike Kahn's process and tools, the processes and tools we use are aimed at helping us satisfy the demand for moving fast and breaking things, not to be good, or to better ensure the doing of good work.
My son Gerrit told me about a YouTube video from a conference where the presenter asked for a show of hands from video game developers in the audience who could produce or successfully compile their own code from the previous quarter. Or from the previous year. Or from two years ago. And by that time the point had been made: nobody had their hand in the air.
The teleology of tool-building
The teleology of tool-building suggests that the real value lies in the end use of the tool, rather than in its origins
The computer creates a distance
Computer imaging tends to flatten our magnificent, multi-sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capacities of imagination by turning the design process into a passive visual manipulation, a retinal journey. The computer creates a distance between the maker and the object, whereas drawing by hand as well as working with models put the designer in a haptic contact with the object, or space.
Humble servants
Our electrical appliances should be humble servants, to be seen and heard as little as possible. They should ideally stay in the background, like a valet in the old days, that one hardly noticed. — Erwin Braun
They should accompany an individual over a long period of time without hindering or disturbing through ‘extravagant forms, loud colors or flashy proportions’.
Michaelangelo's hammer
A young man named Michelangelo stands in front of a huge granite monolith. He stands there at a time in history before the technologies that brought us the hammer and chisel have occurred. He gazes at the rock. He dreams his dream and the best that he is able to say is, What a wonderful stone you are.
…
Michaelangelo now stands in front of the same rock. Thrust into his hands are a hammer in one and a chisel in the other. He looks at his hands, at the technological tools that they hold, and gazing at the same stone, with epiphanic zeal, says I must let Moses out.
Employs nothing at all
The man of today planes to perfection a board with a planing machine in a few seconds. The man of yesterday planed a board reasonably well with a plane. Very primitive man squared a board very badly with a flint or a knife. Very primitive man employed a unit of measurement and regulating lines in order to make his task easier. The Greek, the Egyptian, Michaelangelo or Blondel employed regulating lines in order to correct their work and for the satisfaction of their artist’s sense and of their mathematical thought. The man of today employs nothing at all and the result is the boulevard Raspail.
But men live in old houses
It is not right that we should produce bad things because of a bad tool; nor is it right that we should waste our energy, our health and our courage because of a bad tool; it must be thrown away and replaced.
But men live in old houses and they have not yet thought of building houses adapted to themselves.
When Movable Type ate the blogosphere
Here’s the crux of the problem: When something is easy, people will do more of it.
When you produce your whole site by hand, from HEAD to /BODY, you begin in a world of infinite possibility. You can tailor your content exactly how you like it, and organize it in any way you please. Every design decision you make represents roughly equal work because, heck, you’ve gotta do it by hand either way. Whether it’s reverse chronological entries or a tidy table of contents. You might as well do what you want.
But once you are given a tool that operates effortlessly — but only in a certain way — every choice that deviates from the standard represents a major cost.
Movable Type didn’t just kill off blog customization.
It (and its competitors) actively killed other forms of web production.
Tools of the digital age
The myriad tools of the digital age that provide quick ways to capture words, images, and data have added to the perception that handwritten field notebooks are passé. As someone who routinely encounters objects that can speak to us over millions of years, I may have a bias towards things that have stood the test of time. That said, it is clear that there is still much to recommend preserving records and information in traditional paper field notes.
Over the course of my career, I have developed a habitual field note protocol in which a paper notebook is used both to record information and to integrate records made on standardized data sheets, in computer files, and in photographs.
On Tools
I read an article when I was very young in Scientific America. It measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet — you know, for bears and chimpanzees and raccoons and birds and fish — how many kilocalories per kilometer did they spend to move? And humans were measured too. And the condor won, it was the most efficient. And mankind, the crown of creation, came in with rather an unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list.
But somebody there had the brilliance to test a human riding a bicycle, and it blew away the condor, all the way off the charts. And I remember this really had an impact on me, I remember thinking that humans are tool builders, and we build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities.
And to me — we actually ran an ad like this, very early at Apple — the personal computer is the bicycle of the mind. And I believe that with every bone in my body, that of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near if not at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented, and I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time where this invention has taken form.
Sublime tools
Getting better at using tools comes to us, in part, when the tools challenge us, and this challenge often occurs just because the tools are not fit-for-purpose. In both creation and repair, the challenge can be met by adapting the form of a tool, or improvising with it as it is, using it in ways it was not meant for.
The all-purpose tool seems a special case. In its sheer variety, a flat-edged screwdriver admits all manner of unfathomed possibilities; it, too, can expand our skills if only our imagination rises to the occasion. Without hesitation, the flat-edged screwdriver can be described as sublime—the word sublime standing, as it does in philosophy and the arts, for the potently strange.
Resonances
The resonances arising in workmanship are often very subtle. The fact that the material itself guides the tool differently in different processes of working introduces changes in the overall relationship of curvatures. The smooth curves of surfaces approaching the edge of a jade axe that come about from innumerable abrasive particles moving against a slightly yielding and mechanically unconstrained backing would seem incongruous if other surfaces or outlines were present that had come from cleavage or from the geometric motions of a machine. These could be produced easily enough, but the eye would not establish larger resonances among them.
When all you have is a hammer
The success and spread of a particular tool – and this tool can be organizational or administrative as well as mechanical – has another consequence. Any task tends to be structured by the available tools. It can appear that the available tools represent the best or even the only way to deal with a situation.
Thus is may be wise, when communities are faced with new technological solutions to existing problems, to ask what these techniques may prevent and not only to check what the techniques promise to do.
Three Perfect Tools
An Article by Tim BrayThere is a particular joy in a product that just does what you need done, in about the way you expect or (thrillingly) better, and isn’t hard to figure out, and doesn’t change unnecessarily. Here are three to learn from.
How can we develop transformative tools for thought?
A Research Paper by Andy Matuschak & Michael NielsenConventional tech industry product practice will not produce deep enough subject matter insights to create transformative tools for thought.
...The aspiration is for any team serious about making transformative tools for thought. It’s to create a culture that combines the best parts of modern product practice with the best parts of the (very different) modern research culture. You need the insight-through-making loop to operate, whereby deep, original insights about the subject feed back to change and improve the system, and changes to the system result in deep, original insights about the subject.
The tools matter and the tools don't matter - Austin Kleon
An Article by Austin KleonThough you might not think it from the comic, I’m actually sympathetic to questions about tools and process, as I myself am a kind of process junky. I love hearing about how other writers work.
I’m also not someone who dismisses questions about tools with the line “the tools don’t matter.” In fact, I think tools matter so much that if you don’t talk about them correctly you can do some damage.
...What I love about John Gardner and Lynda Barry is that they believe that the tools you use do matter, but the point, for them, is finding the proper tools that get you to a certain way of working in which you can get your conscious, mechanical mind out of the way so that your dreaming can go on, undeterred.
You have to find the right tools to help your voice sing.
So many little design helper sites!
An Article by Chris CoyierI’m sure y’all find these things just as useful as I do. They don’t make us lazy, they make us efficient. I know how to make a pattern. I know how to draw a curve with a Pen Tool. I know how to convert SVG into JSX. But using a dedicated tool makes me faster and better at it. And sometimes I don’t know how to do those things, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take advantage. Fake it ’til you make it, right?
In ways you didn't anticipate
A Quote by Patrick HebronI always have a hard time wrapping my mind around some of the classic user questions: What is this thing for, is it for novices or professionals, etc? I do my best to avoid these questions, because the best thing you can possibly accomplish as the maker of a tool is to build something that gets used in ways you didn’t anticipate. If you’re building a tool that gets used in exactly the ways that you wrote out on paper, you shot very low. You did something literal and obvious.
Forget the computer — here’s why you should write and design by hand
An Article by Herbert LuiIn the middle of the 2000s, the designers at creative consultancy Landor installed Adobe Photoshop on their computers and started using it. General manager Antonio Marazza tells author David Sax:
“Overnight, the quality of their designs seemed to decline. After a few months of this, Landor’s Milan office gave all their designers Moleskine notebooks, and banned the use of Photoshop during the first week’s work on a project. The idea was to let their initial ideas freely blossom on paper, without the inherent bias of the software, before transferring them to the computer later for fine-tuning. It was so successful, this policy remains in place today.”
Hacking is the opposite of marketing
An Article by Tom MacWrightOne of my favorite definitions of “hacking” is the creative reuse of tools for new and unexpected purposes. Hacking is using your email account as a hard drive, using your bicycle seat to open a beer, using Minecraft’s red bricks to create a calculator in the game.
The opposite of hacking is marketing. Marketing tells you that this particular non-stick pan is the pan you’ll use to make omelettes, and you’ll do it in the morning dressed in fashionable clothing in a nice kitchen. It includes a photo and inspirational copywriting to drive this home. Marketing dictates a style, context, and purpose for even the most general-purpose products. This narrative needs to be specific so that you can readily imagine it: it’s you, in an Airbnb, laughing with friends.
The return of fancy tools
An Article by Tom MacWrightTechnology is seeing a little return to complexity. Dreamweaver gave way to hand-coding websites, which is now leading into Webflow, which is a lot like Dreamweaver. Evernote give way to minimal Markdown notes, which are now becoming Notion, Coda, or Craft. Visual Studio was “disrupted” by Sublime Text and TextMate, which are now getting replaced by Visual Studio Code. JIRA was replaced by GitHub issues, which is getting outmoded by Linear. The pendulum swings back and forth, which isn’t a bad thing
René: A Product Design Tool
A ToolWeb Brutalism, seamfulness, and notion
An Essay by Brandon DornHow a tool for sensemaking reconciles two distinct software design ideologies.
- Seamful vs. seamless
- Reveling in infrastructure
- The brilliance of notion
- How our understanding is working
Understanding Understanding
A dot went for a walk
A dot went for a walk and turned into a line.
The dot, the line, the dance, the story, and the painting had found connections. Memory became learning, learning became understanding.Learning is remembering what one is interested in. Learning, interest, and memory are the tango of understanding.
Creating a map of meaning between data and understanding is the transformation of big data into big understanding.
The dot had embraced understanding.
Understanding precedes action.
Each of us is a dot on a journey.Admitting ignorance
The most essential prerequisite to understanding is to be able to admit when you don't know something. Striving to be the dumbest person in the room.
When you don’t have to filter your inquisitiveness through a smoke screen of intellectual posturing, you can genuinely receive or listen to new information. If you are always trying to disguise your ignorance of a subject, you will be distracted from understanding it.
Information imposters
Information imposters: This is nonsense that masquerades as information because it is postured in the form of information. We automatically give a certain weight to data based on the form in which it is delivered to us. Because we don’t take the time to question this, we assume that we have received some information.
My favorite example of this is in cookbook recipes that call for you to “cook until done.” This doesn’t tell you very much. Why bother? Information imposters are fodder for administravitis.
Michaelangelo's hammer
A young man named Michelangelo stands in front of a huge granite monolith. He stands there at a time in history before the technologies that brought us the hammer and chisel have occurred. He gazes at the rock. He dreams his dream and the best that he is able to say is, What a wonderful stone you are.
…
Michaelangelo now stands in front of the same rock. Thrust into his hands are a hammer in one and a chisel in the other. He looks at his hands, at the technological tools that they hold, and gazing at the same stone, with epiphanic zeal, says I must let Moses out.
I won't get
If I don't ask, I won't get.
Talking with Clinton
When you are talking with Clinton, he is not looking over your shoulder to see who else is in the room. You can tell he is not thinking about how he is going to respond to you. He is there, present and listening.
By the way, when you scramble the letters in the word listen, it becomes a new word: silent. We’re so often wrapped up in our own self-talk, we forget to listen and learn the information in the first place…and you can’t remember or understand something you never observed.
Scales of change
To understand revolutionary change in its full complexity – not just what happened, but why it happened – we need a model that works across multiple scales, and the disciplines that traverse them.
The method
Well no, see, that’s the tricky part. I always try to come up with things that when they find out the method, the method is as interesting as the effect itself. — David Blaine
Selling your own ignorance
When you sell your expertise - and what I mean by sell is to move ahead in a corporation, or sell an idea to a publisher, or sell an ability to a client - by definition, you’re selling from a limited repertoire.
However, when you sell your ignorance to move ahead, when you sell your desire to create and explore and navigate paths to knowledge, when you sell your curiosity - you sell from a bucket with an infinitely deep bottom that represents an unlimited repertoire. And, you sell in a way that’s not intimidating, in a way that joins the explanation to the fascination that comes with understanding.
You only understand something relative to something you already understand
A good question is better than a brilliant answer
The eyes of a traveler
We’ve all heard that travel broadens the mind. But beneath this cliché lies a deep truth. Things stand out because they’re different, so we notice every detail, from street signs to mailboxes to two you pay at a restaurant. We learn a lot when we travel, not because we are any smarter on the road but because we pay such close attention. On a trip, we become our own version of Sherlock Holmes, intensely observing the environment around us. We are continuously trying to figure out a world that is foreign and new.
Too often, we go through our day-to-day life on cruise control, oblivious to huge swaths of our surroundings. To notice friction points – and therefore opportunities to do things better – it helps to see the world with fresh eyes. When you meet creative people with lots of ideas constantly bubbling to the surface, you often come away feeling that they are operating on a different frequency. And they are, most of the time. They have all their receptors on — and frequently turned up to eleven. But the fact is, we are all capable of this mode. Try to engage a beginner’s mind. For kids, everything is novel, so they ask lots of questions, and look at the world wide-eyed, soaking it all in. Everywhere they turn, they tend to think, Isn’t that interesting? rather than, I already know that.
By adopting the eyes of a traveler and a beginner’s mindset, you will notice a lot of details that you might normally have overlook. You put aside assumptions and are fully immersed in the world around you. In this receptive mode, you’re ready to start actively searching out inspiration.
Cart before the horse
It seemed to him that in pursuit of an all-purpose, all-serving health care plan, the country was designing an ocean liner before it even understood why boats float.
The What and the How
How many aspects of problem solving and design solutions are there? Many, many might answer.
But there are actually just two: What to do and how to do it.
Before anything else, before you consider how you’re going to get it done or how much you’ll have to pay for it or how you’ll get permission to do it — before anything else, you have to decide what you want. You have to decide what kind of place you want to live in, what kind of community, what kind of city.
We don’t pay enough attention to the old adage: Be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it.
Thinking with the hand
The idea of thinking with your hands is not the exclusive domain of sculptors or engineers. In healthcare, for exams, surgeons have a powerful link between the head and the hands. Of course, like all healthcare professionals, their work involves a lot of deep knowledge and understanding. But it’s not all in their brain. If you were in medical school, learning to be a surgeon, for example, would you want your professor to be someone who writes about surgery or would you rather be taught by a surgeon? Many surgeons don’t publish scholarly articles. They spent time perfecting their skill with their hands. In some ways, the relationship between surgery and the larger field of medicine is analogous to the relationship between design and the larger field of engineering. Designers — and design thinkers —often think with their hands.
A pattern of understandings
The clock has no finished design and it has been made without any careful drawings or mathematical calculations. The pieces are only made if I can hold their details in my head as I make them, without reference to any set of external measures. I do make rough sketches of some parts as a path to understanding them, but never use these during the making of the parts. The clock gradually grows through trial and error and lots of physical work with metal, but out of this has come a set of principles of making that were not clear to me before doing the clock. I have finally realized that what I am actually making is a pattern of understandings of the process of making rather than the things that are actually being made. — Richard Benson
#15
How different am I, making clock number 15, from the process of natural selection laboring under changing conditions to generate the biological constructs? That ancient evolutionary system works on the basis of trial and error repeated in huge numbers over immense spans of time, with the failures discarded and the successes retained. At times it seems to me that my clock making is quite similar, as my mind, just barely thinking, sorts through huge numbers of possibilities and discards them as failures before even trying them, so the few that are made have a pretty good chance of success. Is this foresight some form of understanding? I think not. No revelation here, just enough thinking to spur the maker on to cut some piece of metal which, once made, might fail or succeed. Yet — in either case — the thing made and its creation remains the sole root of any real understanding that takes place. The clock is crude but gets built, and even in its base simplicity teaches its maker how to understand what must be understood for something to be made. — Richard Benson
A classroom without walls
The city is education – and the architecture of education rarely has much to do with the building of schools. The city is a schoolhouse, and its ground floor is both bulletin board and library. The graffiti of the city are its window displays announcing themselves, telling about what they’re doing and why and where they’re doing it. Everything we do – if described, made clear, and made observable – is education: the Show and Tell, the city itself. It is a classroom without walls, an open university for people of all ages offering a boundless curriculum with unlimited expertise. If we can make our urban environment comprehensible and observable, we will have created classrooms with endless windows on the world.