So, what is it all about?

Recently I wrote a post on another blog of mine, It's obvious, really?,  about the nature of fulfilling a need by using considered design theory and practices, rather than trying to throw technology at it. This thinking came about because I was sick and tired of the same old crap coming from IT vendors and their clients that put the IT vendor's proprietary technology before the problem. 

Many a shoe-horned disaster I have seen while working as an IT contractor. I've seen these third hand so have just shrugged and moved to the other side of the road, but in some cases I was bought in to try fix the problems caused, finding my work often hindered by the limitations of the vendors product.

Don't get me wrong, the work I've described above was in most cases at least workable in its end forms, but I know that with better design planning at the start they would have ended up cheaper to deliver, been more usable and also fit the business needs of the clients more closely.

My initial idea is to find a way of educating clients and IT vendors alike into taking steps to interrogate the actual business problem before even considering a technology to solve it.

This blog will track the ideas pondered and hopefully gain insights from the design community along the way. The results I hope, will be a usable and accessible roadmap to integrating design processes into the very start of every business solution discovery process.

And before you say it, I suppose I am tilting at windmills here, but unlike the battles of the man from La Mancha, I think my battles are definitely more solid and definable so, I hope, are solvable. ;-)

Time will tell.

Woof

What's with the title?

As in all things design, first you start with an idea.

Well, that is not true, really, is it?

The real start of any design is a need. Design's ultimate aim is to help fulfil a need. Nobody NEEDS design; design just helps us all appreciate what is possible.

This post is about how I can up with the name of the blog 'Bark Blog Bark'.

My original thoughts where something like blogaboutablog but that was already taken, the next was blogaboutablogaboutabook but that was getting ridiculous!

Then I went back to first principles - the nub of the need - and thought that this blog would be like random  barking in the dark. For me at the moment, having somebody read it is not its actual purpose. Its actual purpose is to force me to put letters onto the screen and craft them into something that both makes sense to me and progresses the project that will come from it.

Another blog with similar ideas about just writing for the sake of writing is Alan Levine's CogDogBlog, and he has a post from earlier year that came up when I was thinking about the word "barking". His post below accurately reflects my current thinking:

http://cogdogblog.com/2013/01/26/pointless-incessant-barking/

So, okay, there is the idea of barking, blogging and barking again. A progression that may have no real purpose, but is a goal in itself.

Woof!

Barking

The reason I'm barking 

This blog is actually about creating my new website, and the reasons behind every design decision I'm making.

I know it seems I'm at the risk of being seen as a navel gazer, but there is an actual reason behind the whole thing. I need some place to create a conversation about design and its place in the business world, but I also find that by writing down my ideas, I can hone them before I implement. So I thought, why not actually explore the thoughts behind the design decisions I'm making about a new blog, in fact, about a blog that I'm developing to help promote my new book about the first steps in designing a new product.

You see, the blog I'm writing about here is about design and its' application in the development of products in general, and software and services in particular.

So the first decision I made was to write about the design processes behind my new blog, and I didn't want to have that embedded inside the blog itself since it is about my design theories and putting them into practice. This blog is about exploring the best way to communicating those theories.

I'm starting off on an exploration of my target market, the kind of design thinking I want to promote and the tools I'll be using as I build the site and write the book. It will eventually be like looking at my design sketches for the book and the site; in fact I'll probably post those here as well! I'll be putting up and shooting down ideas and hope to have a final product and design rational behind each decision I make along the way.

Warning

Note that this site will be the rambling one. It will be the one with the typos, the one where I go down the wrong rabbit hole and the one where there will be some clangers dropped from a great height.

Enjoy!

Woof