I took theater as my art elective when I was in college at Auburn. That wasn’t by choice. I had hoped to take Intro to Architecture. Auburn was one of the best architecture schools in the country—and for a decent portion of my childhood I wanted to be an architect.
But it wasn’t to be. That was a difficult class to get into and I needed something. So with few options left, I reluctantly selected theater.
But theater turned out to be the most interesting and useful classes I took while in college.
On our first day we were asked to start attending the university theater productions. What really was theater? I had this image in my head of hard to understand actors rattling off Shakespeare. It didn’t seem that appealing, but the class required it. So I went.
The first play I went to was called Little Shop of Horrors, a recreation of the cult classic. It is a dark, comedic musical about a carnivorous plant in a flower shop that grows in power by eating humans. The plant befriends a timid shop worker who becomes complicit in its gruesome feeding habits.
It’s a bizarre and humorous tale about greed and ambition. And I thought it was wonderful!
Three Questions of Criticism
The class wasn’t about performing or learning to act as I had initially expected—it was about learning to form an opinion. It was not acceptable to say that something was good or bad. I was encouraged to dig deeper.
We were taught that a framework for doing that was Goethe’s (pronounced GUR-tuh) three questions of criticism:
- What is the artist trying to do?
- How well did they do it?
- Was it worth doing?
Before that class, I could look at something and have a gut reaction—I liked it, I didn’t like it. But this framework forced me to try and understand intent before making a judgment.
And if you do that enough times, you begin to develop something called—taste.
Applying It to Product Design
I’ve spent the last 15 years working with software and I keep coming back to those three questions.
When I talk to young designers, one of the first things I tell them is to download apps, sign up for accounts. I can’t tell you how many random SaaS accounts I have. There’s no better education than studying other designers and products.
My version of the three questions applied to product design goes something like this:
- What is the designer trying to do?
- How well did they do it?
- How might I apply this to my work?
That third question is where it gets interesting.
Design is largely about constraints. Design without constraints is just artwork. A decision may look strange or arbitrary, but there is often some rationale behind it—familiarity, motivation, customer, relationship to other components, metrics tracked, etc…
So when I’m studying another product, I try to infer the constraints that might have existed. Then I ask—do those apply to my work?
Don’t be afraid to borrow the things that work. Just understand what you’re taking first.
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