Being process-oriented, not productdriven,
is the most important and diffi cult
skill for a designer to develop.
Being process-oriented means:
1 seeking to understand a design problem before chasing after solutions;
2 not force-fi tting solutions to old problems onto new problems;
3 removing yourself from prideful investment in your projects and being slow to fall
in love with your ideas;
4 making design investigations and decisions holistically (that address several
aspects of a design problem at once) rather than sequentially (that fi nalize one
aspect of a solution before investigating the next);
5 making design decisions conditionally—that is, with the awareness that they may
or may not work out as you continue toward a fi nal solution;
6 knowing when to change and when to stick with previous decisions;
7 accepting as normal the anxiety that comes from not knowing what to do;
8 working fl uidly between concept-scale and detail-scale to see how each informs
the other;
9 always asking “What if . . . ?” regardless of how satisfi ed you are with your solution.