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The Student Life an ongoing journal by Donald Lehman |
....who is Donald Lehman? |
September 30, 2003  by Donald Lehman don@donald-lehman.com The big thing I am taking away from my summer design experiences is the need to be able to communicate an idea well and know who you’re communicating with. Some of this came from working at Blu Dot on projects such as instructions or a CAD drawing. Most of this I learned from of all places, my dad. Dad drove with me from Rochester to Minneapolis at the beginning of the summer. On the way, we were talking about how his business is doing and I mentioned to him that I felt his website could use a redesign. He agreed with many of the points I made and suggested that I take a crack at it. Now, when I am in school working on projects, I am dealing with a short 10-week schedule and other designers. In other words, I don’t have to go too in depth on the precise measurements or I can say advanced terms like “rubber grippy stuff” or “London phone booth red” and everyone will understand what I mean. Even at my internships, I could get away with saying, “What this really needs is a thingy right here,” because everyone involved was a designer. My dad, however, has an engineering background and his business is a work flow consultancy. When I first showed him concepts of how I thought the website could work, things I felt were fairly obvious went over his head. For example, I was toying with some “clever” wordplay for links to his case studies, which I thought could be an interesting way to get people curious enough to want to know more. I showed the concepts to some of my friends who are in advertising and design and they understood it right away. I was a genius. Then I showed it to Dad. He didn’t get it at all. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Where is the link?” I tried explaining to him the brilliance behind the tagline the same way I had to my friends. “I don’t care about all that, I just want to know right away what I am clicking on.” I was an idiot. I had an idea on how to get a customer’s attention and so did Dad, but I just wasn’t presenting it to him in a way where he would see what I would see. I regrouped a bit and directed it towards him in a different way and eventually we were able to see eye-to-eye. Eventually what I learned was to give reasoning for most of the choices I was making: the background is grey for this reason, I used this picture here to accomplish this... you get the idea. It took a lot longer at first, and at times was mind-numbingly tedious, but my points got across and we were able to communicate and make changes much quicker in the long run.  Shameless Thought at Work Update: Hey! Good news kids: Registration is now open for Thought at Work. The price is $60 (US) from now until October 24th. If you miss the early registration the price goes up to $80 (US) from October 25th – November 15th. After that your out of luck. Also, be sure to tell your professors that they can get in for FREE. Go register now! “My Backhoe Is Bigger Than Your Backhoe” Design of the Month: Caterpillar 430D Backhoe Everyday walking to class, I have been walking past a construction site on campus. I don’t know exactly what they are building but they use these giant backhoes to move dirt around and it’s freakin’ awesome. I stopped in my tracks one day and just stared at that shovel rip open the ground and I swear I was close to skipping class for the day just to hang out with the work crew. Don move earth! ROAR! |
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