coolbutuseless (@coolbutuseless.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy)

The point of the doing is the doing, not what gets done I noticed a comment in a chat today at work, along the lines of: > We used an LLM to categorise the sticky notes from a workshop. It did a really good job, and even colour-coded the notes and aligned them. To which I shrugged, thought “good on you” and went on with my day. Later, another colleague tagged me and asked if it was something we could learn from. I replied, rather gnomically: > The point of the doing is the doing, not what gets done. It was a somewhat throwaway comment at the time, but I’ve been thinking about it all day. So I’m trying to round my thoughts up here. ## Why do we do workshops and ideation sessions? The people we recruit to take part in Service Design workshops must, for the most part, find them incredibly tedious. But we do them because they get thoughts, ideas and experiences out of people’s heads and onto paper or digital facsimiles so that everyone else can see them. The people who are actual experts in this specialism. We do that so we can: * Challenge each others’ point of view * Bring everyone’s lived experience to the table * Understand where we agree, and disagree Most importantly, we do this to _make people talk about these things._ I can’t emphasise this enough. The entire point of these sessions is to get people talking to each other. People who have never talked to each other before. Who have never understood, or even been aware of, others’ point of view. ## The doing is the work Sure, you can ask copilot or whatever to sort your ideas. Colour code them. Manoeuvre them into neat columns. But here’s what you’re missing out on: * The nuance you get from those “Oh, I wrote that one …” conversations * The “Is this related to these, or more like this cluster over here?” discussions that drive you deep into the subtleties of what those 5 or 6 words mean * An appreciation of the human frustrations, pains and needs behind every sticky note * The experience of _actually having done this exercise_ And it’s the last point that’s key. Outsourcing this to an LLM (or anything else, for that matter) is a bit like sending them on your holiday instead of going yourself. Sure, you’ll get a nice report, not terrifically well written, maybe even some entirely fabricated photos. But you will not have had the experience. You will not have felt that warm sunshine, tasted that chilled rosé, felt that gentle breeze. When we finish these exercises, we typically create some kind of report or slide deck with key findings. Maybe also some photographic record of the finished board. We play it back, file it away, and in all likelihood no-one – except perhaps an assessor – will ever look at it again. But that’s OK. Because the point in doing the exercise is to do the exercise, not to produce a report. The exercise is the work. The report is a byproduct. It’s just a record that the exercise was done. The real learning is embedded in you, and everyone else collectively who took part. The point of the doing is the doing, not what gets done. David O'Brien Website | + postsBio I'm a service designer in Scottish Enterprise's unsurprisingly-named service design team. I've been a content designer, editor, UX designer and giant haystacks developer on the web for (gulp) over 25 years. * David O'Brien __The point of the doing is the doing, not what gets done * David O'Brien __Should coders design? * David O'Brien __Ain’t no I in AI * David O'Brien __No more cookies for you * David O'Brien __I cycled to work * David O'Brien __The disability myth * David O'Brien __Prototyping in the browser * David O'Brien __Running this website * David O'Brien __Who are we willing to exclude? * David O'Brien __Service Design must die * David O'Brien __What do service designers do? * David O'Brien __Prototyping in html * David O'Brien __Good Services Scale: an interactive assessment * David O'Brien __Aphantasia rocks * David O'Brien __In search of broken combs * David O'Brien __Making our account managers appy * David O'Brien __Applying WCAG principles to service design more generally * David O'Brien __Show your stripes * David O'Brien __Making prototypes in the browser * David O'Brien __Telling a story ## Possibly related * It's good to talk * A new life in the unknown * The places and people we remember * A user manual for Lindsay * How we used the Good Services Scale to evaluate the… * Design content first ... who would have thought of that? https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/the-point-of-the-doing-is-the-doing-not-what-gets-done/