Don't Get Stuck on Tooling

So Alex, another talking person, I'm glad that we spent more time. Let's not get used to together, I feel like we're all so close. In times post-pandemic, slightly uncomfortable, but I love you enough to be able to stand here. So talking about love, I know that you are a big lover of well-designed software products. Talking about tooling especially. So I know there have been many discussions around tooling these days, especially with the whole emerging AI trend, it's much easier to tool yourself up, literally, right? I myself am using a lot of tools these days to make my life better, right? I'm just an independent freelancer, right? But how about people working in companies and cleaning robots? But the point I want to make is, generally, tooling is getting more and more used. And I also know that you have strong opinions when it comes to tooling and I wanted to start this conversation about how PMs, PDs, and generally people should tool up themselves or maybe not. I mean, I think tools can really help you a lot, right? As you say, it can take a lot of time, or it can help you produce a lot of time out of your day. The thing with tools is that one thing that I've seen over the time, especially working with designers or interviewing designers or talking overall with designers, is that there is a really strong emphasis on tools. And especially, let's talk about Figma, right? Every designer loves Figma. Who is not using Figma these days? I think we're over Sketch, we're over, well, even you use it. Yeah, you're right, you're right. We're over Sketch, we're over Photoshop, and so on. Nobody's really using those tools anymore and everyone's obsessed with Figma. Figma launches something new, variables, whatever, and people really dig into it, trying to become perfect at navigating tools. And I think this reminds me of a conversation that I had when I still went to design school, where I think we were talking about it was Adobe CS2, maybe, for the ones who remember. I don't. Quite some time before Creative Cloud hit the market, you would still buy for the license? I am, these days. And I remember my design professor still used to work with QuarkXPress. Now very nerdy, only a few designers, old designers, might remember the good old QuarkXPress times. But the point that he always made, it's like, it's not the tool that makes a designer. You need them necessarily to do your work, and it's important that you can work with them, but it's not down to the tool. Sometimes people forget the actual aspect of the craft. It's important that you use the variables and that it's scalable, because it can help you save time. But it shouldn't be the one thing that makes you skip through the actual hard skills. You need to know in and out the basics of design. I didn't want to make it about bootcamps. I didn't want to. But we always end up there. We always end up there. Disclaimer, some bootcamps are great, not all of them are. But this is also this thing where a lot of people think, okay, moving into design is I need to learn the tools. But I think there is this whole background of knowledge that you need to develop, theoretical knowledge, really the skills of the craft. And also having the eye for design. This is, to me, the most important part. And then tools. Oh, wow. We're blurry. What is going on here? Are we back? There we go. I don't remember how long we've been in this state. I didn't check the screen. But tools are just a tool. They just help you. But at the end, if you're a good designer, you will be able to do it with pen and paper. I'm not talking about drawing the best illustrations or being an artist, but the craft of figuring out how the product works, what the directions are, what the flows are, you don't need Figma for that. And you only need 3,000 plugins or templates or whatever to help you with that. When you know the craft, then tooling plays a role. And the same goes for product managers, right? Especially these days, you can use great prompts to let ChatGPT write user stories for you. But still, this doesn't take away the responsibility for you to understand how to build a product. It doesn't take away the responsibility to communicate it. And this is something, whether it's design or product management or engineering, it doesn't matter. Working in a company requires one thing, so talking to each other. We have had so many episodes already about miscommunication, the results of misalignment, the results of missing communication, and these kind of soft skills. Understanding what it really needs to make a product great is not something that a tool will deliver to you, not even ChatGPT. Just having the perfect solution and to decide between three different designs doesn't deliver the end product, right? So at the end of the day, we have to put the thoughts into the whole process. We have to not forget the customer problems, right? And even though it might sound like a logical result that comes out of a tool that we use or processes that are getting reduced with tools, we cannot skip the whole part of thinking about the product. I mean, it is. And thinking about the product means thinking about the customer. If you don't know what problems you want to solve, and if you're not, I mean, I can have a design tool that gives me a great design that makes my designs perfect, but I still have to test it, right? I mean, without talking to my customers, showing it, prototyping it, I will not get the answers. I mean, it just comes down to the craft aspect. You can take shortcuts on the craft. And I think also the whole AI conversation, which can help you a lot and so on, it will also always need people who can still judge what the outcome is. We still will know how to do the proper prompts to validate certain things, right? And I think what I'm scared of with a lot of the tools is that people slowly will lose the craft. That there will be more and more involvement and blind trust on tooling and that the craft gets lost. I mean, I have a question when you were talking about this, I mean, especially when we now look at the whole product content design, UX, UI design topic, I mean, as you said, tools can be helpful and there's still this craft part that we need to master at a certain level. Where's the sweet spot? Know the craft, use the tools to make your life easier and more efficient. So would you say, I mean, let's talk about people who are getting started or at the beginning of their career. Learn the craft. Learn the craft first. Learn the craft. Take out the old books, learn about typography, learn about color theory, learn about spacings and so on and so forth. I can tell you and I mean, being someone who hasn't gone through traditional school, art school or something, I liked that a bit, but I see the strongest designers that I work with are the ones who did like really traditional design, who can reference all the designers, the different styles and so on. It boosts the creativity a lot because it's not just, oh, what is currently happening on the market? What is the best trend? It really gives you that breath of knowledge. From the root, right? Exactly. And I mean, we should also not forget, I mean, let's look back when Steve Jobs was involved in Apple, right? When he actually discovered the whole topic of typography, what was he doing? I mean, he was taking books, he was looking at the aesthetics, I mean, he was absorbing all those kinds of things. And I think whether it's product design, product management or even engineering, it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you have to identify yourself with the whole craft. As you know, the product bakery, where's the name coming from? I used to be a baker, right? I mean, especially as a baker, we have to readjust again, especially when you are crafting real products, the game is not changing. So you still have to make sure that you know what you're doing because no tool in the world will make a good bread with a lot of love in it. And especially you as Italian knows the difference between good pasta and bad pasta, good bread and bad bread. Right? I mean, it's like mastering the craft, being connected to what you do. I mean, it may sound a little bit spiritual, esoterical, right? But I mean, not so much exactly, I mean, I'm just making it worse than it is. But I mean, we're all connected to what we do because we love what we do. And just outsourcing this part with tools and imagining that you can skip this whole hard work is simply wrong. I mean, it's like taking steroids, right? I mean, you can't skip the part to go to the gym. And the tools will only make your life easier and the tools will change. Like if you're an expert now in Figma, who knows what happens with Figma now that they're part of Adobe. And if there won't be a new tool that everyone's going to use, right? Tools are changing. That's why the craft is so important. And I think like going through the history, learning where design is coming from, where products are coming from, like all the background, that's like something that can help you extremely. And I think go through, take some good designers and learn from them. Look at the work that Dieter Rams did on physical objects and translate it or try to understand how you could potentially translate it to the digital space, if you work on the digital space. I mean, what did Apple do? When Apple launched, all of their interfaces were pretty much derived, like they all derived from physical products. You had the brown calculator and so on. So I mean, all the square morphism idea was coming from that, right? But that means that you need to have that background, need to have that knowledge. And now I will just coming with the last thing, quite controversial, but probably a lot of people would agree. Look at all the good products that are currently out there. They're all fucking the same. There is zero creativity in these products. And yes, you need to follow patterns. And yes, why reinventing the wheel if there is already a solution? I'm the first to say these things, right? Like stay efficient, move fast and so on. But you need to have the basic craft to come up with things. And only then you can use the tools to make your life easier. Totally. I mean, remember back then, I mean, especially at the beginning of iOS and Android, I mean, just there you already had two app versions always, right? You had the Android design that was followed, you had the iOS design that was followed. For sure, it makes sense also for companies to merge it and to have like a design system and certain design patterns. But still, even though when it comes to efficiency, we're making progress, the whole creativity part and the things that are making products stand out is changing drastically, in my opinion, downwards. Absolutely. All the brands look the same. All the products look the same. Everything is blue. All the interfaces look the same. So it's a kind of inside job because Alex designed so many brands and they always had the key color blue. So I got hired by companies. I'm not blaming you, but you're wearing a good t-shirt today. The only color I have in the world, maybe cream and cream. True. But to close it, I mean, what's your message to all the product designers and managers and engineers out there when it comes to tooling? I mean, really think of tools as tools, right? Like if you want to build a house, you need to know how to build a house. It's not the hammer that builds the house. You will use it. If you have a crazy good hammer, it will make your life easier. I recently watched a real loan. What's the difference between a $20 and a $200 hammer? Yes, it will make you more efficient. It will make you maybe more accurate, whatever, faster and so on. But you need to learn it. No shortcuts. Exactly. I mean, you need to use your brain to understand and the tools is your biceps. Learn and study and do your things because the learning and the studying will also help you look at other products. If you take dribble as your source of inspiration, which is probably the worst thing you can do. But if you do that and you have the craft and the knowledge underneath, you can look at it, analyze it, understand what is good and what is not good and translate it to your own. If you don't have that, how are you ever going to do? So I think it's like really down to that and that's what will help you become great at whatever you do. And when it comes to tooling, we would love to hear from you how you approach tooling and what you believe is the right thing to do. And by the way, now we're closing this podcast. Why is dribble a bad inspiration? This was the Product Bakery. All links can be found in the podcast description and make sure to follow and subscribe for weekly episodes on all podcast platforms as well as YouTube.