I wrote another piece for MoneyDesktop's blog, 'MoneySummit'. You can read the excerpt here and then use the link below to read the whole thing.
The more software design I do, the more I realize that people need to be able to see and touch something to truly understand an idea. Trying to convey ideas by words alone is difficult for many reasons, but is especially hard because ideas are not real.
Materializing a software idea isn’t as easy as grabbing a pen and “printing” it out from your head onto paper. An idea is just a jumble of foggy concepts, shapes, or colors in your head. The idea doesn’t have actual dimensions or have to compete for limited space. Our minds can be prone to error and confusion, so we may not even be able to see its shortcomings until we can actually see it. That is why an idea must be constructed and discovered.
Trying to construct the idea in reality reveals all sorts of flaws and misconceptions we couldn’t see when the idea wasn’t in front of our eyes. Perhaps all those features don’t actually go together on the same screen. Maybe you realize that there really needs to be a component that you originally didn’t even think of. The idea you originally had might not match what you end up creating, but that’s because design is a process of continual evolution.
Read the whole article at MoneySummit
Cover Image by Filter Collective. (License)