On Impatience

I thought this would be an appropriate first post, as it's been in my head, filed under "design philosophy," for some time.

The best designer would be a person with infinite patience. He would have the time, energy, and organization to work every problem through to its most thoughtful conclusion, rigorously resolving each detail. The solution would be free of loose ends, and there would be a satisfying reason for every decision made. This is what any designer, student or otherwise, is attempting to achieve.

But I think there's a paradox here: in order to be a designer, a person must by nature be massively impatient. The ability to wait makes us fail to notice design problems. Patience means the difference between "This toaster sure takes a long time" and "Why, in the 21st century, do we have to wait so long for toast? Can't we improve this?" Or less trivially, it's the difference between "This product has a learning curve" and "Why does this product require more than simple common sense to be used correctly?" Or even, "Why does this product make us prone to harming ourselves / our environment?"

Designers notice these snags that waste our time and we grind our noses down to fix them. So that's who designers are — people who work patiently and persistently, but only in service of their inability to wait.