“Design” is now “Product” An Article by Dorian Taylor dorian.substack.com Design has very little to do with what tools or methodologies you use, or what your job title is, or what you have a degree in, or even anything like “creativity”; design is about your relationship to constraints. Rather: to what extent are you defining constraints rather than just obeying them? Design is about taking a universe of possibilities and converging onto exactly one outcome. Being handed a set of constraints which you treat like immutable laws of physics (because many of them are) and solving within that envelope is what engineering is. To wit: what most designers are doing most of the time is actually a form of engineering, and engineers are always doing at least some design. This is because genuine design—the power to define constraints—is a privileged political position within an organization, and not everybody can occupy it. In other words, the “seat at the table” comes first. Design is Steve Jobs infamously dropping an iPod prototype into his fish tank, pointing at the bubbles coming out and yelling at his staff to make it thinner. It doesn’t matter what your title is; Jobs is the designer in that scenario. Steve Jobs designengineeringconstraints
Navigation by shibboleth An Article by Dorian Taylor doriantaylor.com The inverse-chronological colly on the front page is exactly what I didn’t want to end up with. I have tried my damnedest to keep everything on this site as temporally neutral as I can make it. I even intentionally leave the dates off the documents. Temporality only matters if you’ve already read everything and you want to see what’s new or changed, like if you’ve subscribed to a feed. Which is exactly what that is on the front page. Reverse chronology bias bloggingtime
Skeleton, Organs, Circulation, Sinew, Skin An Article by Dorian Taylor I’m concerned with how I witness the work of user experience practitioners getting treated: like it’s just a set of motions toward a product’s all-important implementation, and one that we try to compress, due to its ostensible superfluity. Once the implementation is finished, the UX work appears to usually get discarded. Tracing the answer backThe UX coral reef ux
Design System as Style Manual With Web Characteristics An Article by Dorian Taylor doriantaylor.com In my opinion, what makes a designer competent is precisely their ability to credibly justify their conclusions. If you can’t do this as a designer—no matter how successful your results are—then neither I nor anybody else can tell if you aren’t just picking things at random. What I am proposing, then, is no less than to make a designer’s entire line of reasoning a matter of permanent record. On the surface is the familiar set of prescriptions, components, examples and tutorials, like you would expect out of any such artifact. Attached to every element, though, is a little button that says Why? You click it, and it tells you. The proximate explanation will probably not be very satisfying, so you click on the next Why? until you get to the end, at which point you are either satisfied with the explanation, or you aren’t. The Design of Design decisionsdesignsystemsstyle
On the "Building" of Software and Websites An Essay by Dorian Taylor doriantaylor.com I’m beginning to suspect that software, and more conspicuously the Web, is fundamentally the wrong shape for the archetype of the construction project. You are agreeing to make a ThingThe Thing-deadline calculusTrees and graphsContent as value The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the EarthHofstadter's Law softwarebuildingwwwconstruction
Agile as Trauma An Essay by Dorian Taylor doriantaylor.com The Agile Manifesto is an immune response on the part of programmers to bad management. Many a corner officeIntramural brownie pointsFeature factories agilemanagement
The Blue Cliff Record A Book by Yuanwu Keqin, Thomas Cleary & J.C. Cleary www.shambhala.com Mountains are mountainsNo door at which to knockThe miraculous bones of the ancientsWhat did you see when you were there?I have pacified your mind+2 More zeneuphony
Mountains are mountains Before attaining enlightenment, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. At the moment of enlightenment, mountains are no longer mountains, nor are rivers rivers. After attaining enlightenment, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. Don't Rush to SimplicityJust a whinny again zennature
No door at which to knock Penetrating the Blue Cliff, you will open the eye within eyes and realizing life through the Blue Cliff, you yourself will become a torch, the light beyond light. Being so, you will find no door at which to knock, nor any door to be opened. zen
The miraculous bones of the ancients A Ch'an master once wrote that the wise enshrine the miraculous bones of the ancients within themselves; that is, they do not regard teachings of ways to enlightenment as an external body of knowledge or information to be possessed as an acquisition or believed or revered as inflexible dogma, but rather apply it as far as possible to themselves and their situations, vivifying the way of enlightenment with their own bodies and lives, not just in their thoughts. It is therefore a matter of course that new Buddhist literature has been produced; for the Buddhist canon is not closed, as long as people continue the search for enlightenment. Ch'an was referred to by its followers as the "school of the patriarchs" because it was transmitted by a living succession of human exemplars; not a school of doctrine, or philosophical or scholastic interpretation, it was not based on any particular scripture, but on the direct experience of the enlightened mind, by whatever means currently necessary.
What did you see when you were there? Ch'an masters tell us to look right where we stand and step: they ask what is there, is there anything, who are you and where do you come from, what did you see and hear when you were there?—in a hundred ways they try to make us wake up, clear our minds, and face reality directly.
I have pacified your mind Bodhidharma, the first Patriarch of Ch'an in China, was asked by Hui K'e, the future Second Patriarch, so pacify his mind for him; Bodhidharma said, "Bring me your mind and I will pacify it for you." Hui K'e said, "When I search for my mind, I cannot find it." Bodhidharma said, "I have pacified your mind for you." At this Hui K'e was enlightened. In a state of reverberation
In one there are many; in two, one The ultimate path is without difficulty; Speech is to the point, words are to the point. In one there are many kinds; In two there is no duality. zen
It's dark outside As soon as Te Shan crossed the threshold he said, "Long have I heard of Lung T'an (Dragon Pond), but now that I've arrived here, there's no pond to see and no dragon appears." Master Lung T'an came out from behind a screen and said, "You have really arrived at Lung T'an." Te Shan bowed and withdrew. During the night, Te Shan entered Lung T'an's room and stood in attendance till late at night. Lung T'an said, "Why don't you go?" Te Shan bade farewell, lifted up the curtain, and went out; he saw that it was dark outside, so he turned around and said, "It's dark outside." Lung T'an lit a paper lantern and handed it to Te Shan; as soon as Te Shan took it, Lung T'an blew it out. Te Shan was vastly and greatly enlightened. In a state of reverberation