Pandora Bov

Hard as it is to
say how to design, it is easy to say how not to design. Apparently, what
constitutes a successful way of working depends very much on the specific
design problem, the situation and the character of the designer, but failure
and incompetence are universal.

 Ok, how do you
fail as a designer? Well…

 - always
cling your first idea

- jump
into the details immediately

- solve
one aspect of the problem first

- ignore
a stakeholder, preferably a vital one

- first
design the form, then sort out how the things should work

- promise
too much to the client, really inflate his expectations

- don’t
listen to your client, lie to him if necessary

- be
inflexible in your ideas and approach

- try
to surprise your client with a completed design

- ignore
any tests that say the design might be below par

- wait
for inspiration

- stay
“fresh” by not gathering information

- do
not plan (because that takes too much time)

- and
so on

This is a good
but uncomfortable exercise in self-reflection. It is strange to realise that we
are all sinners, some of the time.So if we want to become a successful designer, we have to prevent those points as far as possible.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Architecture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.