A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.
Why product design is like writing a recipe
While reading a cookbook recently I realized the goal of the cookbook author is not entirely different than a product designer. In both roles, the designer and author, there is a need to anticipate the needs and knowledge of the user, and design around those needs within the constraints of their knowledge. There is also a parallel here between the engineer and the professional chef. Both have much more knowledge than the end user, and rarely understand how their user will be using the product they are creating. If you've ever read a cookbook actually written by a professional chef (as opposed to a professional cookbook author), you've probably not understood many of the terms or known what many of the ingredients were. If you did understand everything, then either you're either an experienced chef, or the book was likely co-written with a writer who specializes in cookbooks. User-Focused Design It's not that different with engineers working on a product to be sold to consumers. If you're a computer programmer selling a product to a computer programmer, maybe you can get away with designing it. If you're a computer programmer selling to a consumer, you probably need someone to guide…
If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.
UX Note: High lights and design
Recently while driving down the highway I noticed a crew changing lightbulbs on a street lamp. This particular street lamp was one of those extra-high poles with the circle of lights around the top that you see only on highways and some industrial or sports complexes. I had occasionally wondered why the transition was made to those poles that were double or triple the hight of standard street lamps. My assumption was that being higher they provided a larger spread of light, and they could be placed in the median so they could provide light to both sides of the highway. However, as I knew street lamps had their lights changed by crews with cherry-pickers, I wondered how these high poles whose heights were clearly beyond the reach of a normal cherry-picker had their lightbulbs changed. The answer to that question was now answered, but more on that in a moment. Seeing this crew change the lightbulbs reminded me of two homes with the same issue. Both homes had living rooms with high ceilings, which were very nice, but had the same practical issue – changing the light bulbs was difficult. In the first home, the lightbulbs were standard Edison-screw…