triad of
SKILLS
The student may often wonder how to get started with the task at hand. Are there established tools, techniques and methods to get off the ground? The short answer is yes, there are many: from within and beyond the field of design. The student has to learn how to apply them. This requires practice, for practice begets skills.
Tools
The student may often wonder how to get started with the task at hand. Are there established tools, techniques and methods to get off the ground? The short answer is yes, there are many: from within and beyond the field of design. The student has to learn how to apply them. This requires practice, for practice begets skills.
Techniques
There is a way (‘right’ some would prefix) of doing things or rather actions afforded by the tool. This ‘way’ is the technique, a sort of navigational ability.
The manner in which a nail is hammered into wood is a matter of technique as is the case with strumming a guitar or breathing while swimming. Tools and techniques are embodied. The potter rarely pays conscious attention to the position of the fingers, the pressure being applied to the clay or the speed of the wheel. The potter is simply aware of them, and the simultaneity of actions flows from their body. Indeed if a potter paid attention to each individual action, it would become impossible to focus on shaping the clay (just as it would become impossible to play a composition on a piano if the pianist would start focusing on their fingers, rather than the composition).
Methods
If techniques are a sort of navigational ability, then methods are a sort of navigational guide (of the design process). Tools and techniques are nested within methods, which in turn, are nested within processes. Methods are means of structuring actions. Akin to procedures, a method tells the designer to do this, followed by that. However, a cautionary tale awaits the designer: for although every favourite meal has a recipe, following it is no guarantee of good and satisfying taste. Similarly, though methods can be very useful, blindly following attempts to systematise9 the act of design may not lead to desirable outcomes. Methods should not constrain imagination.
- read John Christopher Jones in How My Thoughts about Design Methods Have Changed During the Years (Chapter 5.3) in Designing Designing (1991).