It’s become de rigeur for blogs to publish lists of advice, or rules to live by gained from the author’s years of experience. After reading several of these, I’ve compiled my own list, a much shorter version.
- Don’t take advice/rules lists too seriously, they’re all made up of people’s personal experiences and aren’t law.
- Empathy will make you a better designer, especially when you’re not designing for yourself.
- Develop your own list, based on real life experience, not what other people have told you.
The first problem I keep having with these lists is that many of them are so definite, as if the author’s experience fits the reader’s perfectly. It may be a pet peeve, but there are no absolutes, and passing down an individual experience as an absolute isn’t helpful, it’s constricting the world view of the person who takes it as gospel.
The second problem, is that by sharing their life experiences as rules or advice, the list becomes about ego. Granted, most blogs are about the author’s ego to start with, but when these lists are shared, they become the Fox news of blog posts – quick snippets taken out of context that are easy to pass around and share without putting any critical thought into them.
What I’ve found is that everyone needs to develop their own list, and that means taking other people’s experiences and your own, and factoring in context. We all owe it to ourselves to think through the rules we follow, and to keep that list of rules changing for our whole lives.
