In the name of speed

A thought that occured to me after reading We’re turning designers into factory workers

I find that the best tool for exploration is still pen on paper. When I have a fuzzy concept in my head, I turn to paper. It’s not collaborative, there’s no expectation of polish, and I can pivot quickly and easily. I can sketch almost as fast as I think, without being constrained by a design tool’s UI.

That said, if an organization discourages exploration in favor of “speed,” nothing can be done before that’s addressed. I put the word speed in quotation marks because such practice usually provides only the illusion of speed. “Look how fast we designed the web app!” But what about all the time that you’ll inadvertently need to spend redesigning it all when you discover that most of the assumptions you made in the name of speed were false?