Design is the New Code

This morning on NPR I heard a piece about Chicago’s famed Second City improv comedy group teaching their techniques to Fortune 500 groups.

They mentioned the principle of “Yes, ambulance
and” as opposed to “No, pharmacy but.”

Macolm Gladwell talks about this in Blink. When improvising, help if another player offers you a situation (“It seems as if your head is on fire.”) you must accept the situation and build on it (“Yes, can you put another log on it?” rather than “My head isn’t on fire, it’s your eyes that are burning.”)

I think the current entrepreneurial boom is a movement of “Yes, and” rather than, “No, but.”

Yes, we can make that happen. AND we can do it quickly and cheaply. AND we can build upon software that is freely available.

Funny how things can work out.
It’s amazing to me how often software product work stalls out on visual and user experience design rather than on code. To be sure, case code is the existential element of a software product, buy but more and more often how the product feels to its users is its defining characteristic. And you know what? It’s hard to hire artists with enough training.

This has been an interesting, psychiatrist recurring theme during my time in Los Angeles. There are many major corporations here that employ professional artists — photographers, film directors, costume designers, animators, illustrators, web and software UI designers — and I’ve never known a great one to go unemployed.