#122 Don't Get Stuck on Tooling
Recent Episodes
In today's episode, Alex and Christian shed light on the growing emphasis on tools in the industry, particularly in the realms of design and product management. While tools can be immensely helpful and time-saving, the duo reminds us of the importance of not neglecting the craft itself. Join us as we explore the relationship between tooling, skills development, and the enduring need for human judgment and understanding in the product creation process. So grab your notepads and get ready for some insightful discussions.
Topics Discussed
(00:18) Love for software tooling and emerging trends.
(05:17) Tools don't replace understanding and communication.
(09:03) Steve Jobs discovered through books and aesthetics and craftsmanship in product design.
(10:23) Tools change, learn history, study good designers.
Meeting Notes (transcription)
Christian:
So Alex, another talk in person. I'm glad that we spend more time.
Alex:
Let's not get used to it together. I feel like we're also so close in times post-pandemic, slightly uncomfortable, but I don't feel like I love you enough to be able to stand here.
Christian:
So, talking about love, I know that you are a big lover of well-designed software products. Talking about tooling especially. So I know there have been many discussions around tooling these days, especially with the whole emerging AI trend, it's much easier to tool yourself up, literally, right? I myself am using a lot of tools these days to make my life better. Right. And I mean, I'm just an independent freelancer, right? But how about people working in companies and cleaning robots? Exactly. But the point I want to make is generally tooling is getting more and more used. And I also know that you have strong opinions when it comes to tooling. And I wanted to start this conversation about how PMS, PDS and generally people should tool up themselves, or maybe not.
Alex:
I think tools can really help you a lot. Right. As you say, it can take a lot of time out of or it can help you produce a lot of time out of your day. The thing with tools is that one thing that I've seen over the time, especially working with designers or interviewing designers, or talking overall with designers, is that there is a really strong emphasis on tools and especially like let's talk about Figma. Right? Every designer loves Figma who is not.
Christian:
Using Figma these days?
Alex:
We're over Sketch, we're over well, even you use stuff, we're over Sketch, we're over Photoshop and so on. Nobody's really using those tools anymore. Everyone's like obsessed with Figma. Figma launches something new, variables, whatever, and people really dig into it, trying to become perfect at Navigating Tool. And I think this reminds me of a conversation that I had when I still went to design school where we're talking about it was Adobe CS Two, maybe 41 to remember. I don't way quite some time before Creative Cloud hit the market, you would still buy for the license.
Christian:
I am, yeah.
Alex:
And I remember like, my design professor still used to work with QuarkExpress. Now very nerdy. Only a few designers, old designers might remember the good old QuarkExpress times. But the point that he always made, it's like it's not the tool that makes a designer. You need them necessarily to do your work and it's important that you can work with them, but it's not down to the tool. And I think sometimes people forget the actual aspect of the craft. It's important that you use the variables and that's scalable because it can help you save time, but it shouldn't be the one thing that makes you skip through the actual hard skills. Right? Like you need to know in and out the basics of design.
And I didn't want to make it about boot camps.
Christian:
I didn't want to, but we always end up there. We always end up there.
Alex:
Disclaimer some boot camps are great, not all of them are, but this is also this thing where a lot of people think, okay, moving into design is I need to learn the tools. But I think there is this whole background of knowledge that you need to develop theoretical knowledge, like really the skills.
Christian:
Of the craft and also having the eye for design. This is to me the most important part.
Alex:
And then tools. Oh wow, we're blurry what is going on here? Are you back?
Christian:
There we go.
Alex:
For how long we've been in this inject screen? But tools are just a tool, right? They just help you. But at the end, if you're a good designer, you will be able to do it with pen and paper. I'm not talking about drawing the best illustrations or being an artist, but the craft of figuring out how the product works, what the directions are, what the flows are. You don't need figma for that. And you only need 3000 plugins or templates or whatever that help you with that. Because when you know the craft, then tooling plays a role.
Christian:
Yeah, and the same goes for product managers, right? I mean, especially these days, you can use great prompts to let chat GPT write user stories for you. But still, this doesn't take away the responsibility for you to understand how to build a product. It doesn't take away the responsibility to communicate it, right? And this is something, I mean, whether it's design or product management or engineering, it doesn't matter. Working in a company requires one thing. So talking to each other, we have had so many episodes already about miscommunication the results of misalignment the results of missing communication and these kind of soft skills, right? So understanding what it really needs to make a product great is not something that a tool will deliver to you, not even chat GPT or just having the perfect solution. And to decide between three different designs doesn't deliver the end product, right? So at the end of the day, we have to put the thoughts into the whole process. We have to not forget the customer problems, right? And even though it might sound like a logical result that comes out of a tool that we use or processes that are getting reduced with tools, we cannot skip the whole part of thinking about the product it is. And thinking about the product means thinking about the customer.
Christian:
If you don't know what problems you want to solve. I can have a design tool that gives me great designs, that makes my designs perfect. But I still have to test it, right? I mean, without talking to my customers, showing it, prototyping it, I will not get the answers.
Alex:
It just comes down to the craft aspect. You can take shortcuts on the craft and I think also the whole AI conversation, which can help you a lot and so on. It will also always need people who can still judge what the outcome is. We still know how to do the proper prompts to validate certain things. Right? And I think what I'm scared of with a lot of the tools is that people slowly will lose the craft and that there will be more and more like the involvement and the blind trust on tooling and that the craft gets lost.
Christian:
I have a question. When you were talking about this, I mean, especially when we now look at the whole product content design, UX UI design topic. As you said, tools can be helpful. And there's still this craft part that we need to master at a certain level where's the sweet spot?
Alex:
Know the craft, use the tools to make your life easier and more efficient.
Christian:
So would you say, I mean, let's talk about people who are getting started or at the beginning of their career.
Alex:
Learn the craft.
Christian:
Learn the craft first.
Alex:
Learn the craft. Take out the old books, learn about typography, learn about color theory, learn about spacings and so on and so forth. I can tell you, and I mean, being someone who hasn't gone through traditional school, right, art school or something, I like that a bit. But I see the strongest designers that I work with are the ones who did like, really traditional design, who can reference all the designers, the different styles and so on. It boosts the creativity a lot because it's not just, oh, what is currently happening on the market, what is the best trend? It really gives you that breadth of knowledge from the exactly.
Christian:
And I mean, we should also not mean let's look back when Steve Jobs was involved in Apple, right, when he actually discovered the whole topic of mean, what was he doing? I mean, he was taking books, he was looking at the aesthetics. He was absorbing all these kind of things. And I think whether it's product design, product management, or even engineering doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you have to identify yourself with the whole craft as, you know, the product bakery, where's the name coming from. I used to be a baker, right? Especially as a baker. Or we have to readjust again, especially when you are crafting real products, the game is not changing. So you still have to make sure that you know what you're doing, because no tool in the world will make a good bread with a lot of love in it. And especially you, as Italian, knows difference between good pasta and bad pasta.
Christian:
Good bread and bad bread.
Alex:
Right.
Christian:
I mean, it's like mastering the craft, being connected to what you do. I mean, it may sounds a little bit spiritual esoterical, right? But I mean, not so much. Exactly. I mean, I'm just making it worse than it is. But we're all connected to what we do because we love what we do. And just outsourcing this part with tools and imagining that you can skip this whole hard work is simply wrong. I mean, it's like taking steroids, right? I mean, you cannot skip the part to go to the gym and the.
Alex:
Tools will only make your life easier and the tools will change. Like if you're an expert now in Figma, who knows what happens with Figma now that they're part of Adobe and if there won't be a new tool that everyone's going to use, right? Tools are changing. That's why the craft is so important. And I think going through the history, learning where design is coming from, where products are coming from, all the background, that's like something that can help you extremely right. And I think go through, take some good designers and learn from them. Look at the work that Dieter Rams did on physical objects and translate it or try to understand how you could potentially translate it to the digital space if you work on the digital space. I mean, what did Apple do when Apple launched? All of their interfaces were pretty much they all derived from physical products. You had the brown calculator and so.
Christian:
I Mean the morphism idea was coming from that, right?
Alex:
But that means that you need to have that background, need to have that knowledge. And now I will just coming with the last thing, quite controversial, but probably a lot of people would agree. Look at all the good products that are currently out there. They are all fucking the same. There is zero creativity in these products. And yes, you need to follow patterns and yes, why reinventing the wheel if there is already a solution? I'm the first to say these things, right? Like stay efficient, move fast and so on. But you need to have the basic craft to come up with things and only then you can use tools to make your life easier.
Christian:
Totally. Remember back then, especially at the beginning of iOS and Android, just there you already had two app versions always, right? You had the Android design that was followed, you had the iOS design that was followed. And for sure it makes sense also for companies to merge it and to have like a design system and certain design patterns. But still, even though when it comes to efficiency, we're making progress, the whole creativity part and the things that are making products stand out is changing drastically, in my opinion, downwards.
Alex:
Absolutely. All the brands look the same, all.
Christian:
The products look the same, everything is.
Alex:
Blue, all the interfaces look the same.
Christian:
So it's a kind of inside job because Alex designed so many brands and they always had the key color blue.
Alex:
I got hired by companies that had.
Christian:
I'm not blaming you, but you're wearing a blue t-shirt today.
Alex:
The only color I have in the world, maybe good, but I like cream.
Christian:
And cream and cream. True. But to close it, I mean, what's your message to all the product designers and managers and engineers out there when it comes to tooling?
Alex:
I mean, really think of tools as tools, right? Like, if you want to build a house, you need to know how to build a house. It's not the hammer that builds the house. You will use it. If you have a crazy good hammer, it will make your life easier. I recently watched a Real on. What's the difference between a $20 and a $200 hammer? Yes, it will make you more efficient. It will make you maybe more accurate, whatever faster and so on. But you need to learn it.
Christian:
Yeah, I would say no shortcut. Exactly. I mean, you need to use your brain to understand. And the tools is your biceps.
Alex:
Learn and study and do your things. Because the learning and the studying will also help you look at other products. If you take Dribble as your source of inspiration, which is probably the worst thing you can do. But if you do that and you have the craft and the knowledge underneath, you can look at it, analyze it, understand what is good and what is not good, and translate it to your own. If you don't have that, how are you ever going to do that? So I think it's really down to that, and that's what will help you become great at whatever you do.
Christian:
And when it comes to tooling, we would love to hear from you how you approach tooling and what you believe is the right thing to do. And by the way, now we're closing this podcast. Why is Dribble a bad inspiration?
