#4. Visual thinking, deeply critical but generous
also This Is My Jam, The Bees, It's A Sin, barley risotto with marinated feta
Hello!
This week has felt like a challenge. I’ve been flat out working and my brain has been telling me to delay writing this. But I know that once I delay one, I’ll delay the next one, and it’ll stop being a thing etc. I'm not ready for that yet.
So I decided to dash it out and see how it works. It’s got less in it and it’s less edited. Perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps not. We will find out.
Visual thinking
I’ve spent a joyful week sketching concept interfaces (with pen and paper) and turning them into clickable prototypes (in Figma).
It’s been five years since I did this kind of design work. After leaving cxpartners in 2015 I’ve been a user researcher and a product manager. There have always been designers on the teams who do a better job than me.
But this week there’s been no designer :)
Sketching with pens made me remember the tools of exploration. I always have ideas for interfaces that I think are winners - but experience has taught me to hold these loosely. I use 6-up sketching where you take a sheet of paper, fold it into six sections, and force yourself to sketch six different versions of the interface. It’s a struggle to move beyond the first one but wonderful things often happen. I get way too attached to my ideas and any tool that breaks me away - even for ten minutes - is powerful.
Turning the sketches into clickable prototypes in Figma showed me how far things have come since Axure. It also made me realise that tools contain their own traps - something about the power and precision squashes all the joy of sketching. Weird.
One thing I wasn’t expecting was the emotional rollercoaster of being a designer again! I got super-defensive when being offered critique and had to have a quiet word with myself. I fell hard into a trough of despair when sketches failed to materialise into interfaces. Learning to navigate that emotional journey is a design skill that needs practice to keep it warm.
Finally, these visual thinking methods have changed how the startup is thinking about features. Before we sketched we had endless discussions about features. As soon as we sketched the core interface they stopped talking about them! Coming face-to-face with the complexity of something you’re taking for granted is a great way to focus.
And I do love a bit of focus. Well, a lot of focus, really…
Deeply critical but generous
One non-visual thing that made me think was a post called The Slumflower Beef Has Exposed the Limits of Influencer Activism by Ash Sarkar. Gary Younge sums up what makes this piece of writing so good:
This passage made me sit up and pay attention in particular:
"While the white and newly awakened have learned of their centrality to the unequal organisation of society, there hasn’t however been an obvious avenue for their participation in anti-racist struggle. For good reason, the emphasis has been on the self-organisation of Black and brown people; so while white people have been made more politically aware, that hasn’t necessarily resulted in being more politically active. Rather it has intensified their consumption of political content – particularly material which equates white guilt with anti-racist solidarity."
The way Ash writes this out so clearly made me reflect hard.
Am I equating my own white guilt with anti-racist solidarity? Have I consumed more political content rather than being more politically active? Yes to both at times.
Am I making a lazy assumption that there is a monolithic bloc of Black opinion out there rather than the seething, lively mass of debate and criticism that breathes in Ash’s piece? I’m ashamed to say probably yes at times :(
For example, last summer I donated money to Black causes without understanding how that money would be spent. Then later I read powerful critiques of these same causes from other Black people that skewered the unthinking donations made to them by white people.
Anyway, this all made me realise that suspending my critical thinking when it comes to anti-racism stuff is not helpful. Just because it’s hard to talk about (and write about) doesn’t mean it’s better to be left unsaid.
After all, Gary Younge’s “deeply critical but generous in spirit” is 100% my vibe elsewhere in life. Why not here too?
This Is My Jam
My all-time favourite web product was This Is My Jam by Hannah Donovan. Each week you posted up one track (and one track only) that you were loving and your feed was all your friends’ and friends-of-friends' jams. I miss picking up those music recs. So this is my jam for this week - Bunji Garlin’s monster Differentology - because it’s nearly soca season and even in lockdown “nobody wanna dance by yourself” (sadface).
Reading
It’s a bit of a cheat because I haven’t finished it yet (weekly updates is relentless!) but I’m loving The Bees by Laline Paull. It’s literally a story about bees in a hive where it throws you in as a new bee gets born and everything unfolds. Also it’s got hexagons on the cover which are the best polygon…
Watching
It’s A Sin, like everyone else, but that doesn’t make it any less moving. I’ve only seen one episode but it brought to life the joyful side of being gay in the early 80s in the same way that the Keith Haring documentary did. I grew up post-AIDS so it’s been important to get this different take on life before it struck. Also, the parties and the music just make me want to go out. Soon, please…
Cooking
If you come to my house there are always portions of Yotam Ottolenghi’s barley risotto with marinated feta in the freezer because (a) it’s delicious (b) it’s cheap and (c) when you’re making four portions you might as well make twelve. I made that this week.
OK. It’s ten minutes past the time I’m meant to send this but I’m going to say that’s fine with me. A couple of people replied last week and that was lovely so feel free to say hello if the mood takes you.
Stay safe.
Will