Tenet 8: The Design IS the Details

Sometimes, when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think that there are no little things.
-Bruce Barton

Detail matters. They more than matter. They are the design. I used to be satisfied with my ideas, rattling around in my head existing in a vague state of abstract glory. Their lack of detail was a lack of flaws. Lack of flaws kept me in a state of complacency and false confidence that the ideas were good. When you extract your ideas, challenge them and try to make them real, you are forced to grapple with the minutia and either realize that they were never that grand to begin with (few are) or you wrestle with them long enough to make them grand (my preferred route). This is another thing that I wish someone would have told me long ago. How many years’ worth of ‘good’ ideas did I waste in a non-creative state?

Design is the details.

What if you could apply aerospace-engineering-level precision to everything that you do? Some things would be better… some things, many things, would not. Understanding what benefits from a more thorough treatment of the finest details is what masterful, effective creation is about. You have to realize though, that any design – anything that can be designed (a game, an image, a mechanism, your life…) the design is the collection of details that makes your object different from any other thing that exists. The design is the details. If you neglect to pay attention to details, you will fail. If, as we explored in the previous tenet, you pay too much attention to all of the details, you will likely fail that way too. The balance lays in which details you identify as the important ones and how you handle them.

In my younger days, I would often fixate for very long periods of time on the grandiose greater vision that I had for something. That was what I loved to do. Envision. Conceptualize. But I never dug into the gritty details. I kept my head in the clouds and never came down to grapple head-on with the details. That is where the hard work is. In the weeds.

The main problems here are: how do you know which details are vital and which to ignore, and then how to synchronize these details with your vision.

In order to know which details matter, you must first know which details exist – what are the working parameters? What are all the knobs that you can turn? Dive fast and deep into the belly of the project as a whole and explore. Get to know it inside and out. Take notes, mental or otherwise, on ideas and possibilities that arise in your mind’s eye. This is an essential step: exploration. It is the basic first step for any endeavor – do some homework, some research. Find out what exists already and build your database of very relevant working solutions.

Now you have a grasp of the basic situation. You have a feel for what details exist. You must rely on either your own intuition about which of those details matter or the intuition & advice of others knowledgeable in the subject, preferably more than you are. The step here is to sort through the masses of details and filter them out.

This is a fluid process and further experimentation can be applied. You may find that two details are connected in a way that you didn’t realize at first. It may take some massaging, but you will work it out if you put in the time.

Knowing these details, understanding them deeply, will allow you to manipulate them – to arrange them in ways that matter. That’s what design is. Arranging the myriad bits of information to satisfy the requirements. Maybe they are passed down from some corporate, but ultimately, it is your job to modify them so that they complete the greater objective. You must identify the greater objectives. Is it for the machine to perform a task to a certain degree of precision? To invoke a deep emotion within a viewer? Now assess how you will arrange the details to achieve the desired outcome. You must have some goal. Some lighthouse to move towards no matter how small.

In the world of details, you can get lost very quickly. It is like deep jungle -rife with movement and shiny creatures whizzing past. Full of vines and snares, waiting to entrap you. Veiled in a foggy mist that stifles your vision. If you don’t have a light in the distance that you are moving towards – a frame of reference that you have established – you may circle the jungle for hours – perhaps months or god forbid, years, only to find that you have made no progress at all.

1. Exploration
2. Identification of lighthouse (goals, objectives)
3. Begin arranging the details per goal
   a. Move towards the light
4. Assess the alignment of details & goals.
5. Repeat 3 & 4

You’ve set a light in the distance, cutting through the fog. Now you have to follow it. Begin to assemble the details of your design according to the objectives. You have to just jump in somewhere. If you wait for the perfect place to jump in, you won’t find it. Once you make the jump, - realize that it may be messy at first – you will soon realize where your efforts should be allocated. You will if you are mindful at least. You will compile a nice collection of detailed structure over here.

You have made it to align with a specific goal – the thing about your objective requirements is that you will not just have one requirement. You will have many. You must balance these. You must balance and prioritize the requirements before you can balance the details. So you may start by aligning your details to meet one single criteria. Then you change your focal point to another criterion and assess how you can alter the first bundle to meet the new requirements while changing as little as possible. You repeat this process

OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Until you come to a grand collection of the details that generally meets all your requirements. Then, you make it better. You repeat the entire process. This is Design. Iteration until the details amount to a working set of solutions.

Design is the orientation of the given solution set of details towards specific outcomes.