I joined Robert and Joan in their office in the backyard. It was probably my own prejudice towards working from home, because I can’t get anything done, that I wanted to see how can their business operate so successfully, being a backyard based company.
I arrived there at 10 a.m. Robert, Joan and their son Steven were in the office enjoying morning coffee and slowly picking up where they left off the day before. Steven was setting up computers and other equipment. Joan sorted a few invoices and accounts. Robert did not do anything in particular until a phone rang and he picked it up. The project, client wanted them to do was about graphs, charts, tables of statistics for an online presentation.
This is the project I am going to discuss and analise in this piece of writing.
First thing Robert needed to know were: the purpose of this presentation, target audience, the content and deadlines.
Because he is working in a self-conscious society. His skills were not learned through a formal education, because design evolved into a separate commercial discipline much later in the process. He persued his interest in animation from passion for it, learning on classics as Disney’s “Fantasia” etc. Robert had to adapt to a commercial market, expand his horisons and realise big opportunities. The shift to commercial design established certain rules of this discipline that were applied in the industry and were learned through practice and internalised to become tacit knowledges. Even though Robert did not have a proper formal education in design, the industry forced these rules on him and they were learned through experience. Especially to adapt to a new market he needs to have the right vocabulary to stay competitive and up to date.
The client faxed all the information he requested 10 minutes later. Robert had a quick look at the tables and graphs on the fax and then had to leave for a while.
Joan, Steven and I had a closer look at the information that was faxed through, discussing what the client was expecting, colour scheme, and other ideas. The original presetation was in black and white with Microsoft cartoon stick figures in odd places. We agreed on that these Microsoft Clipart icons are probably the element we could elaborate on, adding a bit of colour and humanise it a bit.
Because it is easier to relate to a human character than to something alien, silent, and indifferent, it’s just a part of our human nature.
As soon as Robert returned, an hour later, he started talking about all his great ideas of how he believed the project is going to work. “When running your own business your brain never stops working. You realise that you can’t fool yourself. Even driving on a road gives me time to think and plan.” (Robert Brown)
Rob walked to a table and quickly sketched a little character, with glasses, standing in front of the whiteboard, pointing at something. Robert’s idea was to create an animated online conference, with cartoon characters, like the little professor he just sketched, discussing these statistical graphs and charts. So he transformed a seemingly boring project into something he could get inspired by.
“We don’t need to completely cartoon the presentation. We put 90% of emphaisis on the content, but add a bit of character to it. It would be better to place it into a more human context” (Robert)
It is always easlier to talk about something that you have personal interest in. That’s what happened here. Robert personalised the project turned it into something he can relate to and feel passionate about. As soon as you make something close and personal, you achieve better result. As it was mentioned earlier it is easier to understand something that suggests human characteristics and can communicate information to us in a simpler way. Rob also mentioned that 90% of emphasis is on the content. This is a formal rule in design education that a content comes first. So he reflected on knowledge from his experience and confirmed it, listening to his son who had a formal education. It will also help break information into parts, so it is faster and easier to absorb. Considering that people’s reading ability became that they can only recieve limited amount of data in one time. People have shorter attention span. And information like statistics is especially difficult to attract attention to, and it is difficult to keep the viewer interested longer than 5 minutes. These conclusions were drawn from experience, dealing with people and Rob’s personal observations.
Robert and Joan rang the client later in the day, settling due dates and discussing the costs involved. The client liked the fresh approach, admitting that their presentation was a little too ordinary and outdated.
With the rapid developement of technology and increasing user demands, there is an ongoing search for newness. In a technology dominated society a majority can afford to have a computer. Microsoft has a giant portion of the market and basically monopolised the world with its products. However, Microsoft system have only a limited standard set of icons. That everyone came to use. What 10 years ago was a novelty became boring and old-fashioned very quickly. To keep up with the times, boring and ordinary are not very good descriptions for the company who wants to attract some attention. And that is why they agreed that they needed something else.
Robert was very inspired and confident about his ideas, especially because we had a similar approach to it, suggesting to animate Microsoft icons. They mapped out the storyline for the conference on paper. And started working on it based on this plan.
On the one hand Robert needs to personalise the project to feel creative and passionate and achieve his best. But on the other hand he realises a commercial nature of his work nd a need to ‘control’ his inspiration and creativity, by concentrating on work constraints and limitations. Therefore, planning allows him to keep track of his work, regularly stepping back from it to check the brief.
This is my observation of Robert’s theory in use. Rob himself does not articulate the meaning of this step in his design process.
They divided responsibilities between 3 of them.
A good example of the Division of Labor. Being a family, as well as a formal commercial organisation everyone’s opinions is highly valued. Everyone had a say in decision making. Robert, however, was the one responsible to answer in front of the client. It tells us that we are still working in a male dominated structure. From a feminist perspective masculine traits like independence, mind, reason, culture, are highly valued, and it undervalues culturally feminine traits like interdependence, community, connection, emotion, nature and forces womanly duties as wife and mother. This is why Robert has a more “superior” position in the company and in the family, I assume. Joan deals with invoices, accounts and other housekeeping jobs. She is also a good animator, but prefers to stand behind. Robert is a strong example ofor Steven as his father, as well as craftsman. Steven learned as an apprentice a craft of animation and later recieved a formal education in design, with more technology aspects, learning programs like Flash, etc, so that they can adapt in a new environment.
Steven and Joan were working on the charts and graphs, animating links and arrows pointing from one box to another. They established a pattern for consistent presentation of all chats and graphs.
Consistency is another rule of design, especially in online design. It gives a sense of belonging to the same set. It creates the order in presented information.
Robert was creating characters, participants of this conference, and animating them discussing these charts and graphs. He sometimes asked for our opinion on what kind personalities to add to certain charcters, being a sort of psychologist of creating a right combination of personalities in the group.
Before opening his own company, Robert had 20 yeras of experince, working with other professionals. In this time he developed a pretty good understanding of how to deal with other people, and how to establish good working dynamics. A good conversation must be neither wholly predictable not fully unpredictable. If it is fully predictable, it’s boring and not good, and if it is wholly unpredictable, it’s crazy. Good conversation involves a moving between these extremes in a kind of on-line observation and action, which is so natural and spontaneous to us that we don’t even think about the capacity we have to do it. This is an example of reflection in action.Robert is not only a reflective practitioner himself, he can also stand outside this knowledge and manipulate these variables to apply in his work, so that he can explicitely manipulate human personality types to create a sucessful interaction, communication among people.
Robert is a reflective practitioner. Even if the project did not seem very exciting in the first place, it did not put Robert off, and he turned it around to become more “fun”. “The reflective practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation he hinds uncertain and unique.” Rob reflected on this ‘phenomenon’, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour and knowledge. He turned the problem around, which generated a new understanding and a change in situation.
I believe that through such experimentation, facing challanges and testing them Rob built his repertoir. Which is an important element when one achieves professional expertise. This allows him not only see what needs to be done, but also have an immediate intuitive situational response. Realise wider aspects of any work, recognise patterns, which is a situational knowledge in action. However, through my observation I realised that he is still working in a model of applied design, where design is a causal link between a need (problem) and a solution (product). Based on Christopher Alexander’s terminology Rob identified the misfit between the form and its context and worked to achieve harmony, mutual acceptability between the two. The wrongness is somehow more immediate than the rightness of the object, that is why when analysing the information on a faxed sheet it was more obvious to see the misfits and work on improving them.
It’s a good point that computers and the World Wide Web dematerialised the object of production, specifically looking at animation. It simplified labour and material intensive work, making it more environmentally clean, but it is a controvercial issue that needs to be mentioned here of how much damage do computers and other technology cause? And whether it is a better alternative?
Robert’s design demonstrates confidence and professionalism. The reflective practice shows his intuitive sense for animation, ability to take responsible, reasonable risks, make rational judgements, knowing when to compromise and when to stand for what he believes in. He embodied a practical wisdom: the general ability to do the appropriate thing at the appropriate time in the appropriate way.