Make money doing the work you believe in
False Dichotomies, Part II
Most design processes insist on a sequence: think first, make second. Research closes, then craft opens. A discovery phase hands off to a design phase, clean and one-directional. You finish understanding. Then you start making.
Thinking moves toward understanding. It questions, reflects, conceptualizes. Its purpose is to know what you're dealing with before you touch it. It's successful when the right question is asked.
Making moves toward grasping. It prototypes, iterates, materializes. Its purpose is to hold an idea, not just think it. It's successful when making it teaches you something thinking couldn't.
This usually brings into play which one comes first, and which one counts as “real work”. Is making just execution, the hands catching up to a decision the head already made? Or is thinking just anticipation, guessing at something you won't actually grasp until you've built it?
I think it's a false dichotomy. Understanding lives in the head. Grasp lives in the hands: to grasp something means both to comprehend it and to physically hold it. Making forces a position, and a position reveals assumptions that thinking alone never surfaces. You don't fully understand a thing until you've made it, and you don't see what you assumed until the thing you made gets it wrong.
Thinking through making. Grasp comes from the hands, not just the head.
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This is Part II of a series I created based on slides I use for my interaction design teaching. Here’s the collection of all five parts:
