When The Right Tool For The Right Job Becomes A Thing
There are times when the quality of the tools you use is not such a big deal. In that time, there is really no need to buy expensive, high quality, pro tools other than vanity. In the things you do, you can get by just fine with cheap tools. The level of your craft isn’t limited by the tools you use … yet. But then there is that moment when you need to take your stuff to the next level. You have mastered the basics and gathered enough experience to take on a challenge on a whole new level. Then you suddenly hit a wall. You can’t execute on the level that is required for this job. First you start to doubt your skills, but then you realize it’s the tools that are holding you back. All of a sudden you see the limitations of the tools you used for years. They have served you well all this time, but now you have found their breaking point. Some people spend their entire lives not bumping in to this point, but you just did. One moment the tools were fine, and now they are not. You see the world in a different light. Now you start to discover the specificity of the design of the tools. You see things you haven’t seen before. Congratulations, the right tool for the right job has just become a thing.
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” — Abraham Maslov
A story about screw heads
Let me tell you what happened to me. I have been doing all kinds of home improvement stuff around the house for years. From building cabinets to desks and tables. Some light wood working, electrical stuff and a little plumbing. Nothing fancy, but I enjoy working with my hands and real material when I’m at home. After a day of meetings talking about strategies and sitting behind my computer, it’s a good way to get your mind off of things. I have a decent set of tools in my garage. Nothing fancy. But recently I discovered something that was right in front of me all these years that I did not see. It’s a story about drill screw bits.
My latest project around the house is building a tree house. I have been wanting to build one for some time and I finally got around to it. Top priority here is safety. It’s elevated from the ground quite a bit and falling down is not an option. So I use big beams and big screws. The problem, it turns out, with big and long screws it that they are not only good in providing the necessary sturdiness but they also take some force to get into the wood. I was using random cross-head screws and my general purpose cross-head screw bit I have been using for years. But I was having problems getting the screws all the way in the wood. I predrilled the holes, but still my cordless drill was slipping. The length of the screws was requiring too much force. Force my tool couldn’t deliver. When I bought the cross-head screws I accidentally bought a pack of torx screws. I never used torx screws before. But because my screw bit was slipping, the torx screws looked totally different to me. They didn’t just look like strange screws that required a strange screw bit, but they looked like they could take more force. I grabbed my screw bit box an looked for a torx screw bit. It worked. It turns out that they can actually take more force and the long screws went into the wood without a problem.
At some point I ran out of the torx screws. I still had some cross-head screws that I did not want to waste. With my new found knowledge about screw heads and bits, I took a second look at the box of cross-head screws. It turns out there was a strange number on the box. But now I recognized the strange number from my screw bits box. I found the screw bit that matched the number on the box of screws. I put it on my cordless drill and as it turns out, if you use the exact screw bit that the screws require, you can apply more force and the screws actually go all the way into the wood. Who would have thought? Any woodworking professional probably. I got all through my odd jobs around the house for years without the need for exact matching screw bits. But now the right tool for the job became a thing. A whole new world of screws opened up to me. I saw the world in a different light. My one-size-fits-all screw bit was good enough for years. But now that my eyes were opened, I saw the limitations of my old bit and the possibilities that opened up with specific bits. I saw that I could take my handywork to a whole new level.
“A good tool improves the way you work, a great tool improves the way you think.” — Jeff Duntemann
Design quality
The same goes for design quality. For a lot of purposes average design is good enough. But just like screws, design is also a tool, a way for your business to move forward. It all depends on what it is you want to achieve, at what level the service you deliver has to perform. Okay-UX or even not-bad-UX is sufficient for a lot of business applications. Especially for internal applications most businesses choose to put the UX bar pretty low. And if you look at the UX from a standpoint of out of the box software that never seems to fit your company needs, any form of customization is a gain in UX quality. In digital service design projects there is typically a tension between development and design. Certain UX decisions fit better to certain platforms. They all have their biases. Some things that were designed might not fit well with the development platform. The choices you make here depend on the task at hand. You are creating a tool for your business to deliver a service, to move your organization ahead. How well that service has to perform, how mission critical it is that users engage with it, determines how good the UX should be. Remember: things aren’t mission critical, you make them mission critical, that is where innovation starts.
Design is a tool for your organization
Design is a tool. The required level of UX design, the quality of the tool you are creating that has to deliver your service is determined by:
- The level of the task,
- whether you want to make a difference,
- the level of your ambition,
- the importance for achieving your strategic goals,
- the investment you are prepared to make,
- the business case you can create.
The ROI of good design
The design investment will have to pay for itself. Good design means good returns. There is plenty of research that shows that organizations that invest in good design have far better returns. So good design is a choice. Whether your service needs good design or not is not only determined by the service but also by to what level you want to take it. When you create a tool with design for your organization, that tool will in turn shape your organization. If you raise the level of your tools, you raise the level of your organizational skills and mindset. The return of a well designed tool is not only in it’s immediate returns, but also has impact on your corporate culture and abilities. Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is beautiful, whimsical and emotionally engaging. The choices in the tools you make for your organization is a choice for what narrative you want to create, on what journey you want to venture, what road you want to take. As Marshall McLuhan once said: “We shape our tools and our tools shape us”.
“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” — Marshall McLuhan
