Key learnings from my first month of CMCI Studio
To slow down and add a moment of reflection to this year-long sprint, the last post of every month will be a retrospective and attempt to summarize my key learning or discoveries from the past four weeks.
1. Fail Fast, Fail Often
Sure there is a substantial narrative encouraging failure across the design world, but how often do you actually fail? Probably not often enough.
After only three projects, it is quite apparent how crucial early failure is. The ability to quickly test initial concepts, hypotheses, and problems, before even thinking about building a prototype is one of our most significant opportunities, and can exponentially reduce cost and heartache down the road. It’s better to fail over and over again, in this early phase, if it allows us to define the problem better or confirm our hypothesis with real users.
2. Solve the Right Problem
It sometimes feels we are programmed to guess what the problem is, design for ourselves as the user and then start throwing features around and see what sticks. These first four weeks have made it evident that we will FAIL(and not in the right way) as designers if we fall into this trap. Instead, we need to demonstrate patience, and use every tool we have to hone in on the problem efficiently, and then test our assumptions quickly, cheaply, and thoroughly before moving towards prototyping or iteration. Don’t get stuck in an infinite research loop, but also don’t blindly follow your gut and inherent biases.
3. Card Sort!
Card sorting was a completely new research methodology for me and has already proven to be one of my favorites. Something about the tactility of the process, and allowing the user to show instead of tell made this technique feel much more authentic, not to mention how quick the process is. I quickly learned that without precise hypotheses to test, and the right cards, this method rapidly turns into a dead end.
3. Start With Why? Framework
Having had a fair amount of exposure to this sort of business framework, I was initially apprehensive about trying yet another model. However, I found Simon Sinek’s Start with Why to be an incredibly useful framework for defining a business or product and then creating a backbone or guiding light for the rest of the critical business facets to build on. If our why and how are well defined, we have a crucial tool for evaluating all potential paths and future ideas that feels stronger than the majority of mission statements or strategic visions, which tend to hide their lack of specificity with lots of jargon.
5. git/GitHub/Local Dev
I have spent a fair amount of time working with code in the past, but have always been timid and avoided learning git and setting up a proper local development environment. After just two weeks of practice and habit building, I finally get why these are fantastic tools, and feel like a fool for not taking the time to learn these earlier. Running a local node server, and allows me to spend more time focusing on my code and testing ideas, and less time fighting with my FTP client. Github has already proven to be a tremendous resource, giving such seamless access to almost infinite code, libraries, and solutions, not to mention version control allowing you to keep track of commits, as well as manage complex teams all working on the same code base.
