This but not this

Every design problem starts by understanding it. That's what we're supposed to say anyway.

But sometimes the more we learn, the more impenetrable the initial problem starts to feel. We get distracted by an expanding resource of information. Our once simple problem becomes entangled with others. It gets hard to locate the things that are actually useful.

One way through is to follow an objective process. We trust in familiar structures that have served us well before – and hope that the truth emerges. It feels like it works. And maybe it does. But it tends to always favour intellectual arguments over much harder to justify instinctive ones.

Another approach is to just say ’this but not this’.

‘This but not this’ is a phrase you’ll often hear around our studio just before someone chances a thought. Said as a sort of pre-apology for a liberty about to be taken in oversimplification. A request for immunity, from probable stupidity.

It is an idea said without actually trying to think too hard about said idea.

‘This but not this’ presents itself as basic / naive / throwaway / stupid, but it’s usually born from a place of considered thought – even if it doesn't actually feel like it. A sort of gut reaction to all the information. A shot from the hip. An internal edit. Both complete and incomplete, that we hope takes more form said out loud and not in our head. It came from somewhere. So there’s something in it?

It is approaching the problem backwards – reaching for a singular, specific answer first – then testing it against a framework of understanding. It is freedom from just obsessively rearranging the puzzle in front of us and hoping for new ideas from all the same pieces. It opens up to the unexpected and the irrational. A break from the over-intellectualisation.

Nine times out of ten times, ‘this but not this” still mostly ends up as NOT this. But it will always help move a stuck conversation forwards.

Thinking this way should be easy. But it only works when people feel free to speak openly in the first place. It can be hard to stand by something that on the surface appears to oversimplify the brief, throw out the research or challenge a set understanding. No-one likes pulling at the rug everyone is standing on.

The right idea isn’t always easy to spot. Missed in its subtlety. Ignored for being too obvious. Hard to rationalise. Vulnerable to critique. Etc. We recognise ideas that fit what’s worked before. We’re less patient with the oddities. I have always liked how Jonathan Ive refers to them as ‘fragile’.

Ideas chanced without much deliberate ‘thought’ are not a substitute for a process. But they are a necessary reminder that good design can still happen when it stops taking itself so seriously.

So say more ‘this but not this’. Don’t worry if you can’t immediately articulate why.