"All people dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did."
- T.E. Lawrence
Dreams, Plans, Actions, Memories.
Throughout my life, this has been the way I unconsciously approach every idea, every outing, every whim, and every desire I have ever had. Quickly enough, it became part of my workflow as well. As soon as I consciously understood this as my process, I made a framework out of it.
Dreams (Strategy)
“Being creative inside your head is easy, true creativity lies in making something beautiful, useful, and lasting from whatever you have at your disposal.”
— Me, late one night after three coffees
Dreams are whatever is possible within our minds. They are the ideal state. They represent every “what if”. They have no constraints, but they do not exist. To make them real, we need to ask: How do these dreams come to be? What do they draw from? How do they enter our reality? And how will they change our lives and everything around them? How will they interact with and elevate other dreams and fantasies?
This, in Strategy and Design alike, is the first step of something new. To me, dreams mean finding the gap between what you are and what you could be. To see more than what is in front of us. True vision. How do I go about dreaming? I use my curiosity to seek and my senses to perceive, in hopes of understanding more. More about where I am and where I could go.
In my work, here is when I look out for the goals that the team sets out to acomplish, I listen and empathize with any problems or issues users might be having, I find and understand the technical limits and constraints together with the development team, and in the end and through all the collective effort we will have our dream defined. A Strategic Vision.
Moving forward, we will have:
An understanding of our status quo and the potential gain of leaving it.
A vision of the future to aim at and be inspired by.
Conviction to move between the two, to improve our reality.
Plans (Tactics)
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Once I dream of something, I start to think of every possible road I can take to make it a reality. Until that is done, the line connecting the current moment and the future is unclear. That is a good thing, because I need to freely create, understand, and iterate on my options first. Those would depend on my surroundings, what is at my disposal, any challenges that stop me from taking a specific path, or any unthinkable paths that I overlooked before. Can any of these get me closer to where I want to go?
Plans are the set of concrete steps along a path that will take us from where we are to where we want to be. During this step, I will come up with as many real plans as possible that fit the vision defined in the previous step and try to break them. It is by touching and moving and playing with the potential solutions that I can realize which one will hold and which will not. To get where I intend to go, I need a strong plan, and in my eyes, the strongest plans are those that allow for the greatest flexibility within their boundaries.
And how will we know that the plans we chose are the correct ones? By defining a reasonable time frame, what success means to us, and ways to measure it. By keeping very aware of how these plans get us closer to the vision. And above all, being comfortable with risk and uncertainty, and focusing on putting effort only into the things we can influence.
For our next step, we will have:
A deeper understanding of the problem(s) that we need to overcome, and of the situation and resources at our disposal.
A defined set of actions that need to be done to get us closer to our vision.
What success means to us, and ways to measure it.
Actions (Execution)
“Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
With the path opening ahead, it is time to embark on the journey. It is time to put in the hours and work. It may be difficult, intricate, mysterious, rewarding, fun, or all of the above, but that remains unknown until we get to experience it.
This step, in both Design and Strategy, is where we build. Nothing can be left to the imagination at this point. I will use any tool, skill, and resource at my disposal to ensure the solution we’ve developed is of the highest quality and aligns with our vision and plans. I will use my experience and expertise to make sure that we are getting closer to where we want to be, by testing often and seizing every opportunity to validate our creation. Otherwise, it is back to the drawing board.
It is my responsibility to make sure that the team can sustainably turn all the hard work and ideas into a reality, and to support it at every step of the way. I believe that the process is just as important as the end result, and enjoying the time spent creating, learning, and collaborating with like-minded individuals is one of the biggest privileges in life.
At the end, we will have:
The actual product, service, or solution to use, test, and validate.
Newfound knowledge gained from practice and real-world experience.
Increased connections, forged through collaboration, with the people around us.
Memories (Experience)
“Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.”
— Rosa Parks
Once it is all over, we get to keep the reward of the hard work. We managed to change our reality. Experiences create memories. This is both true for us creators as it is for the people using what we have built. Now all that remains is to revel in the fact that our vision is real, and that we have traveled the path we set out to travel. We get to keep every lesson, story, and emotion that came with it. Nobody can take that away from us. That is how we grow.
I obsessively pay attention to feedback at this stage, and measure how the real-world solution worked to solve the problem at hand. I aim to learn from what our users are saying and doing, and incorporate their feedback into the next cycle. The key is to keep in touch with the end-user as much as I can and listen carefully. Empathy is vital to understanding.
For the ones affected by the reality change, well, all there is to do now is enjoy and learn about their new status quo. Hopefully, they will have lasting memories of whatever they have found in this process, and they will remember how they felt about it.
Taking a page from the Zen philosophy, the last step is also the first. The cycle does not end here; it starts over. Again and again. And we do this because we love doing it. We love creating new realities.
What we have for the next cycle:
All the lessons learned through the obstacles bested during the process.
A new, more profound understanding of our reality, challenges, and desires.
New problems to solve, new goals to achieve, and new dreams to dream.
Closing Thoughts
I hope with this, you have a better understanding of how my workflow and (most of the time) my mind works. As a parting thought, I want to pour my heart out here: This is a human-centered discipline, so I believe we must stay as human as possible. We should stay humble (says the guy with a quote by himself in between other quotes of truly amazing people), we should stay fun, we should keep an open mind, ear, and heart, and work hard. If you are here, thanks for taking the time to read the ramblings of a dreamer turned Experience Designer & Strategist.
- Santi
