Why the discussion around design tools is dangerous

I remember when I was at design school, I just wanted to be that person who knew the tools of the trade inside out. A part of me still clamours to be like that.

The trouble is there are just too many tools floating around these days. Working at Adobe makes the whole gamut of pro-design tools available to me(which I do take for granted). But for the design students still at university these days, constantly wired to the collective wisdom on the internet, I want to say this : Get really, really good at one or maximum two software/prototyping tools and give the rest a pass. I don’t mean to say that one shouldn’t try out the new paradigms and features being offered by the myriad different products. It helps to know the possibilities that say, a video tool can offer, or a coding environment can provide. But it’s too risky to get bogged down in the race to fill the ‘Skills’ section of your resume, and forget about the actual making & thinking processes.

The toss up is between knowing how to make things vs knowing what to make in the first place and questioning the why. The aim is to communicate our ideas appropriately and have an innate understanding, respect and empathy for the people and processes that figure out the execution. This is especially true for those who are in the Industrial design/UX domains.

Tools are important, yes. But they don’t make the designer. New tools and ways of creation will keep coming along, and we should try to adapt and optimise our workflows accordingly wherever possible. The key then, is to find a balance between the amount of time we spend in learning the mechanics of the machine and the time we spend in actually using it to build something of value. The judgements about what constitutes value are large and subjective, and I’ll leave that argument to another rant that I make later.

Besides, I’ve always found that the best way to learn a new tool is to use it in the realization of a concept/idea that is dear to us, that was thought of independently without the fear or know how of any tool. Having a vision of what the end result or experience should be like gives us a clear direction to navigate the new territory of a tool, and gives us the courage to struggle through it.