[Sigia-l] My Toolbox is full...now what?

[Alexander Johannesen]

> So what are the secrets of creating good/great stuff under 
> real life circumstances?

To me, it has been to ask very basic questions about large things with
repeated finer granularity, hence getting to the core of things and
then being able to simplify and refine things better. In the end as we
simplify and cut away complex fat, a lot of the tools and methods we
use to control very complex things becomes less important.

Maybe that needs an example; We get requirement A. I ask 'why?' They
answer with 'it's in the spec', and I follow up with 'why?' They
answer 'someone wants it', I ask 'why?'. They answer 'because of X',
and I ask 'why?' (you get the gist of it now, I reckon :) and after a
long chain of this I usually end up at some person wanting some
feature because they felt it was right, asking them 'why?' and so
forth. Through being a pedantic nosy bastard I've stripped away a
*lot* of possible hazards, risk, stupidity and nonsense from my
projects. Maybe not the best *carreer* move (because people don't like
to answer simple questions), but if you're in it for the passion like
I am ...

Anyway, a lot of methods and tools in the IA/UX toolbox is to better
control complexity. My approach is simply to reduce complexity. Maybe
that's a too simplistic answer, but it seems to be what I win with. It
is amazing how much simpler things get when you start asking hard /
simple questions; people are given the chance to revise their
thinking, and more often than not do.


Alex
-- 
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
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