This post at Business Pundit put me in mind of an experience early in my career as a designer. Actually, it was this specific paragraph.

I'm reminded of a story an engineer friend told me years ago. When the first hardware description programming language came out, it made circuit design much much easier. How did his boss embrace the new tools? By drawing out circuits the old way and having one of the young guys code them into the new tools. Why not learn the new tools? Fear. Apathy. Or maybe because we see our value in knowing how to do things, when really our value should be tied up in learning how to do new things and apply new knowledge.

The problem for me was, and is, that I cannot draw well at all. I can barely manage a decent stick figure. So my solution was to shut myself in my office, work out my ideas on the computer, then trace them. I'd present these “drawings” to him. He would make his comments and I go back to my desk to start “working them up.” It worked out well. He was happy that I took the time to work out ideas by hand, and impressed as hell with how fast I could go from “sketch” to finished layout.

Then, of course, I got caught.

He walked into my office while I working away on one of my “sketches.” There were two completed “sketches” with their originals on the desk. For a brief moment I thought I was going to be out of a job. Either that or he was going to destroy the computer and he gestured at it wildly why exclaiming that the answer to the design problem is not in that damn box.

At which point I picked up the box of Sharpies on my desk and threw it to him and calmly replied, “it's not in this box either.” I followed that by pointing out that the pen and the computer were both tools. I challenged him that even when he was sketching out an idea he was probably thinking on some level about how it could be done on the computer. He couldn't deny it.

I never had to present “sketches” again.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment