Found - notes from 2014 Tufte class!
Some useful gems about seeing, designing, and understanding
Ten years ago in May 2014, I attended a one-day class by Edward Tufte. Unlike his usual seminar with Tufte sermonizing on scholastic principles of information design — with a free book set for attendees — this event featured three other speakers beyond Tufte, who himself simply spoke at the very end. Entitled ‘Think, Design, Produce’, this class featured a veritable rockstar lineup of visual data storytellers & prototypers — Jonathan Corum, Bret Victor, Mike Bostock. Tufte concluded the day with a short lecture on ‘The Thinking Eye’.
My newly found notes from the day below:
Seeing is about pattern recognition and learning new patterns. It must be practiced over time to develop the sensitivity to see what’s possible and find what’s more than what is available.
Sketching is visual problem solving, a method of probing and finding a clear thought. Once you find it, then communicate that “aha!” moment.
Anticipate confusion and help the user/reader/viewer navigate through your solution. Through the combined efforts of understanding & explanation you should respect the user.
Too much of publicly applauded design are really empty “facades of communication” without actual real meaning & value.
When producing the designs, embrace the limitations to arrive at truly novel solutions (or an innovation). Keep refining the idea by ruthlessly applying “common sense”.
Understanding, elegance, and beauty are emergent qualities that result from clarity, empathy, and simplicity.
Shift your thinking about graphics from “nouns” (or geometry) to “verbs” (or physics) — from data objects with edges and vertices to transformations and consequences for continual interaction, thus shaping a dialogue with users.
Design is fundamentally a research problem: tackling a design problem is like navigating a maze that’s revealing itself in real-time. You are trying to find your way through that maze to the exit. You are searching for solutions, while simultaneously grasping the contours of the problem space & audience needs.
Thus, as a designer you are constantly in a state of creating and editing. This can compound the challenge of what it means to design something elegant and understandable with value.
“The thinking eye” has a taste for excellence and searches forever for knowledge. Serenity is the condition in which all brainpower is devoted to this “thinking eye”.