Is your pan too small?
Posted by shegeek at November 10th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Sarah was excited about helping her mother prepare Thanksgiving dinner. She watched as her mother cut both both ends off the ham before putting it in the pan and then into the oven.
“Mom, why did you cut off both ends of the ham?” Sarah asked.
“That’s the way my mother always did it, so that’s how I do it.” said Sarah’s mother.
“But why?”
“I don’t know. You should ask your grandmother. “
Sarah walked out of the kitchen to find her grandmother. “Grandma, when you prepared ham for baking, why did you always cut off both ends?”
“That’s what my mother always did it,” said Sarah’s grandmother.
“But why?”
“I don’t know why. She taught me to cook and I have always done as she did.”
Sarah was even more perplexed by this. She found her great-grandmother in the living room and asked her. “Great Grandma, when you prepared ham for baking, you always cut off both ends. Grandma and Mom do the same thing but couldn’t tell me why. They said they do as you did. So I’m wondering, why did you cut the ends off?”
“Well,” Great-grandma said, “when your great grandpa and I were young, we only had one pan and the pan was too small.”
Do you know why?
So much of what we do as designers and developers becomes habit. We do much of the same thing day in and day out, driven by process, influenced by experience. There is a great deal of comfort and safety in process. It allows us to control our development. It allows us to review and create repeatable events and reusable deliverables. It helps us become more efficient. But it also strangles us and encourages the use of blinders. Process can hinder and hamper and kill your projects.
Too much process is a bad thing
In an effort to become efficient, we have created a culture of non-thinkers and non-questioners. We do things because we were told to do it a certain way or because that’s how it’s always been done. While I am a big proponent of process, I am not a proponent of blind process. Blind process is what happens when we rely so heavily on templates and the expected workflow that we forget to analyze, discern and improve.
No project is exactly the same as another. No client is exactly like another. No two needs or requirements are exactly the same. The business need behind a technical requirement may be different which would require the implementation to be handled uniquely. The audience may be different, requiring special handling or treatment. If we rely on our repeatable processes and templates so heavily that we forget to think and envision and question, we are cheating ourselves, our clients and the audience who will be using the product, the website or the application we are creating.
Don’t get stuck
It’s important to question the whys and hows to make sure we are considering all options. Processes and templates are tools meant to assist, not stifle. The way it has always been done is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes the reasons have changed or technology has progressed. Perhaps there are ways to solve business problems or design solutions that weren’t considered or weren’t possible in the past. Even if something was determined out of scope, out of consideration, outside the realm of the possible, revisiting those whys is worth at least a passing glance.
Challenge the idea that it has always been done a certain way and get to the reasons behind the whys. And if your pan is still too small, it could be time for a bigger pan.
Categories: Design & Development
Tags: process, Questions, why
Another day, another crappy user experience on Twitter. Sadly, failures have become de rigueur which leads me to longing for another option. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still having a love affair with Twitter, but the bloom is off the rose. The new car smell has faded. The moon has lost its honey.
