I love finding old notes and doodles that you can’t quite remember making, or even what meeting or context they came about in. This set that I nearly just swept away caught my eye, as they’ve partially remained in mind. Ideas that I am still playing with, alongside others that I can hardly interpret now.

What’s the half life of ideas?

That’s half-life in the radiation sense, not the game.

‘The time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive’. Taking directly from Wikipedia here because it’s a brilliantly concise definition.

How this relates to ideas, specifically in the world of design, still resonates. The way good or even great ideas come up in companies, projects or teams, but then instantly start to decay and start to lose their potency. Some stronger ideas last longer, but all eventually decay and either need to be ‘thought of afresh’ or very actively reinvigorated.

This thought possibly came earlier this year when thinking about GDS, design systems, design roles, digital transformation and other related topics. I wonder with recent GOV changes if we can say the half life of GDS was effectively 14 years, and if the DSIT news has reset the clock?

Note, I’m aware I’m pushing the radioactive decay metaphor more than my basic physics permits, but it was just a note off the top of my head, and nothing in comparison to the next note about the “Brownian motion of ideas”! What was I thinking here? “They jiggle”?

I don’t know, but the diagram of connected and jiggling ideas makes me think I was thinking more about how ideas are always very slightly changing, and don’t just sit still and remain constant. Ideas are in constant flux, or something.

Paths, options, and opportunities

These diagrams had no annotation, but they’re a type of doodle that constantly recurs in my mind so I know what they’re about. A bit like multiverse theory, or Sliding Doors theory for a more 90s media reference. Decision trees. An expression of choices and options.

These ones were illustrated more to express the ideas and opportunities that cause distraction on the path toward a more focused goal. A diagram of an ADHD thought process, essentially, that will feature more in another ongoing project.

Thinking about multiple opportunities and paths like this came up in another conversation last week which reminded me of this great take from Tim Urban / Wait But Why. Which in turn makes me think of bifurcation diagrams, which in turn make me wonder if that’s what happens with design processes and methodologies?

We start with a tidy idea like ‘iterative design’ but after enough blog posts, workshop templates, conferences, and community of practice meetings on the subject, bifurcation occurs and we end up with 1001+ ways of expressing and professing the same basic ideas.

Anyway. Options and distractions and trying to manage them all successfully. Not easy. Like creating gantt charts for the flaps of butterfly wings.

Design processes and opportunity

This final doodle-note builds on the other two, pondering about how we better preserve ideas, and keep clearer records of their origins and lessons.

Less waste in the design process.

Waste though re-learning and reinventing.

Less waste in the opportunity.

Where are the opportunities to optimise?

Threads and themes need to be better documented, connected, and made re-traceable, goes the idea here. The opportunity to optimise I thought/think is in making all design projects more scientific in their process and open in their documentation. A topic I covered in What is science and why should we care? (and how the same goes for design).

This line of thought reminds me of an old idea, inspired by Philip Tetlock’s work on accountability and The Good Judgement Project. I wanted/want a platform that records assumptions and reminds you over time to review them and judge their accuracy. A way to possibly prevent idea survivorship bias, by documenting all the bad ideas that we’re inclined to forget and erase, in favour of plotting paths that show only our correct steps.

There’s something in the idea of designers and design projects being more accountable, and openly honest about their ideas and judgements. If we could see the poor judgements that went into making a project a damp squib, we would surely be less likely to repeat them, and better able to learn objectively.

Design Histories are a nice example of what this might look like, but for me they need to be project histories, and presented in more engaging ways. Not that I’m saying any of this is easy, so hats off to design histories and any teams that put in the hard work to make them effective

Orbiting thoughts and ideas

Not one of the three original notes I intended for this post, but on finishing the above, the random orbiting nature of the thoughts and ideas reminded me of this even older note. This one I think from 2013 or so, found in a note book that I was throwing away. I have no recollection at all of drawing this, but again the theme in it still resonates. Muling ideas, sharing a few, letting others in. Collective conscious and all that.

Update. 2 min after posting: Practically the first thing I read after posting this and thinking about designers and accountability, I came across Re: The oddness of the political moment, 1. Accountability of politicians via Alex. Accountability for all!