The Most Important Element of a Professional Designer
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Comments (15)
I would have to say that ears (listening) is the most important – without listening to and subsequently understanding what our customers want, it doesn’t matter how good our work is, it will never meet their expectations.
Agree with Jack. Though the Mouth has to play an almost equally important role because sometimes (oftimes even) the client doesn’t know how to well us what they want. We have to know what questions to ask to get inside their head and meet them in a place where our vocabularies and understandings can find common ground.
Eyes: without them you probably wouldn’t be a designer in the first place (although I am certain that there are exceptions).
In fact, the order you have them there: eyes, ears and then mouth, is a perfect hierarchy.
The listening happens before any assistance is given to putting the client’s concerns into words. It’s listening carefully that informs us of the client’s possible inability to communicate. After this, speaking comes in when we inquire further into the problem, asking those questions that Wilson mentioned.
While the three pictograms certainly highlight important qualities, I believe a designer’s knowledge of him/herself transcend these. Knowing one’s values is the most important quality. Clear values bring into focus exactly the kind of work one wants to do. They enable one to determine which clients to take on. Good listening, hearing, speaking, and all qualities important to a healthy working relationship happen naturally when a designer and their clients share the same values.
If the question mark is supposed to resemble the mystery flavored Dum-Dums, then it definitely has my vote.
Seriously, though, listening is most important. Without listening, we can’t begin to discuss a clients problem and offer potential solutions. Quite an interesting post.
This is a question I find myself asking quite often, so I thought I would post it here to see what other designers think. Thanks for the comments!
I agree that listening is important, but I think I still hold that outward communication (the mouth) is the most important.
As wilsonography said, without the mouth, you cannot ask the right questions, and without the right questions you may wind up listening to what amounts to gibberish when trying to set goals and craft a design.
Also, once a design is accomplished, sometimes the hardest part is communicating how it meets the goals, and why further “what-ifs” and scope creep can be inappropriate for a project.
I stand to be corrected here, though… this is just where my thoughts are today.
I think it’s a pointless question because they’re all necessary. Can you determine which gear in a clock is most important even though, if you remove any of of them, the clock ceases to function? The only way to prove that any of the faculties in the picture are more important is to argue which ones you can design without.
I see your point Jordan, but in this – as with all design – it’s a question of emphasis. At this time, I feel the need to emphasize my communication skills. This has made me a better designer and professional.
The question is not what is essential, merely what do you believe makes you a better designer. Or for clocks, which gear makes the clock better at being a clock? Opinions?
The eyes have it, if you’ll pardon the resolutely deliberate pun.
Taking the opposite approach – ‘discard the least essential two’ – it quickly becomes apparent that client-designer communication can be just as effective *outside* of the sonic realm.
Further, it could even be argued that a flurry of annotated sketches on a relayed notepad would be *more* effective, eliminating as it would the homophonic idiosyncracies found in speech.
Students of Rock history are no doubt chomping at the bit at this point, as there is an obvious counter-argument for this non-aural communication: Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge. I feel confident, however, that with fewer assumptions – and, perhaps, more napkins – even that could have been avoided ;)
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Less whimsical is a second argument: that a designer needs to observe.
Even the skimmiest of readings of any of the designers’ moanfest websites out there will reveal that common designer’s problem: that there is often a gulf separating what the client *thinks* they need, and what the client *actually* needs to solve their problem.
Place too much emphasis on using your ears, and you could very well end up with:
[a] A compromised – or worse, an inappropriate – design solution, and
[b] An overwhelming urge to contribute to a designers’ moanfest website.
Sure, you can use the mouth to narrow the gulf by asking ‘the right questions’… assuming you know they’re the right ones.
But this gulf can be more easily traversed by astute observation; or to hijack someone else’s catchier maxim:
Don’t listen to what they say… watch what they do.
From the initial assessment of the client’s pre-existing problem, to evaluating the efficacy of prototypes of a proposed solution – via the intangible aesthetic value required of most design – the eyes play too crucial a role in a successful design process to relegate them below the other senses.
You’ll never get more true, direct information.
[Love what you guys are doing, by the way - you're a real inspiration].
Thanks Rich!
I am glad someone came up with a smart argument for the eye. I agree that only observation will lead to those “right questions”.
Plus, you can’t develop visual taste without constantly absorbing visual stimuli. Very good!
What makes you a better designer is adding that which is missing or lacking among the three. Which probably differs from designer to designer. To overuse the clock analogy, the gear that makes the clock a better clock is the one that’s missing.
Maybe your question is pertaining to the situation where all three faculties are equally present (however you would determine that). In that situation if you wanted to decide which one should get your emphasis it would probably, as in all design, be a matter of context. Depending on the particular client and project, the faculty that you’d be best served in emphasizing probably changes to meet those particular challenges.
So where’s the heart?
You’ll need it to process what you see.
You’ll need it to understand (and sometimes stomach) what you hear.
And you’ll need it to speak out and ask tough questions.
If you haven’t the heart, where do you process criticism (which is that which makes you grow in the first place)? You can’t become a good designer without it.
If you are good at technical design, you need your heart to understand what the client wants and the guts to lay down the rules of the job. To not cave in under pressure, to not shortsell yourself and to keep your moral compass aligned.
I vote for heart.
@Berthold: I completely agree with Heart’s importance. I guess I did not add it here because I believed it’s implied that a designer got in to this crazy business because of heart… but come to think of it – what about brains? I think that everything you stated could be solved through intellect, not intuition or passion as you’ve suggested. Which serves us better? Maybe we need another post…
I would say the question mark is the most important ;)
The ability to recognize, distinguish and focus on the questions and on what stands out.
I know that this is not technically what you ask, but the symbol of the question mark to me actually expresses the attitude with which I think its best to engage any project.
It represents inquiry, and openness which is at the heart of any type of development. Design to me is a problem solving process, and we have to be able to recognize the problems before we fix them right?
By choosing the question mark as the overarching symbol for the entire process, it also represents (to me) the ability to adapt to a process, to adjust certain methods to better suit what is needed in each situation.
Even in the various stages of the process one might choose communication over listening, or aesthetics over verbal communication.
Furthermore, by superimposing the question mark over each symbol, or behind each symbol, it hints at a deeper insight.
Listening with the intention of finding answers to questions, asking questions, listening FOR questions, being open to intuitively hear the silent questions behind what the client is saying.
In the same way, the eye and the mouth with the intention of ‘finding the question’ transforms each process into something more meaningful by giving it a specific purpose.
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