Welcome to Room557

A letter to a student about their future referencing my past

The below is an excerpt from a round of correspondence with a student this semester. The student was having a hard time connecting the great ideas tin their head with a way to properly communicate them through design... as well as how to get the most out of the in-class critique.

Upon reflection, I thought that some of the sentiments might be beneficial to a wider audience, so here you go:

...

"... you have so many excellent ideas kicking around in your head (and you’re so anxious to get them out) that pacing them is hard.

I know it can be frustrating when someone tells you to slow down and take your time — or worse when someone might overlook something that you think is important because cause they’re not able to dive into the details… but, as you can imagine, these are lessons hard-earned myself. As someone who was also once young and full of good ideas — and also anxious to get them out — it took me a while to understand that not everyone was on the same page.

In fact, I remember exactly when that was:

Listening to Understand

Listening is a skill. As a designer, listening is as much of a skill as picking the perfect typeface… more so, really. But when we say “listen”, we often forget that the concept has many facets.

Like George Nelson showed us in his book How to see, listening — like seeing (vs. looking) — can have very different outcomes depending on how you approach it. More often than not, we approach it from the wrong angle.

We listen to reply.

We need to listen to understand.