Creating a Tool

Maeda

I want to talk about the notion of what is a tool. This was sparked by a review from DCGS of one of my students. They said that if you are creating a tool it must be usable by others.

Kai Krause - his tools are great...

Scott Snibbe was involved in After Effects, what do you think.

Snibbe

Its worth the comprimise of your personal aesthetics to make a tool that can be used by others.

Tons of code not used: computational dependency between elements that did not fit the GUI.

I wasn't completely confortable, but was worth it hearing the praise from others.

Maeda

Sort of a Design for humanity

Snibbe

I left adobe after two years to work on much more selfish design at interval.

Different because after effects generally liked, Kai is loved and hated. A lot of Kai's person in the tool.

Grenby

Bryce is a good program. Fun tool. Good for creating worlds. Not because of the interface, but the functionality.

Unknown

But a lot of Bryce in the final designs by any person using it?

Golan

Bryce vs. Clarinet analogy. Tools, toys, and instruments. Making something that is yours within constraints of tool.

Snibbe

Marketing means somethings must die to sell 10,000,000.

Interval

With the Kai stuff: I don't necessarily like the interface, but I respected it because Kai didn't use the same vanilla interface.

Maeda

This is an issue because - it is hard to get a job if you are good at developing technology. Like myself or Scott Snibbe.

Snibbe

It's not hard to get a job, it's hard to be a premadonna.

Maeda

When part of a larger entity, it is hard to assert yourself. But some people do enjoy making tools.

Snibbe

You only realize after the fact the good feeling when people use your tools.

Redin

I make tools for myself. Right when I need to get a job done.

Maeda

Most of us are able to create in a language. We make abstractions like libraries and tools to get to a goal. But if you don't have a goal, that process doesn't work very well.

Let's say, for example, a photoshop tool. you can make many tools, but if you don't have a dying need to make the tool yourself or it will be meidocre. If I am hired to make a rain filter, my heart won't be in it.

Inge

Why is that different?

Maeda

It's not the same! It depends what you want to do in life.

Rosenberger

I think that we are discussing liking what it is that you do. Anyone who has a job they don't like, won't do a good job. Your heart wasn't in it.

Maeda

Ahh, having the heart. Having the will. This is something you are not taught in school, at MIT. You are prepared for intellectual tag. But you are not taught the issue of expression. Its about yourself. How about you Fernanda?

Viegas

I am coming from a graphic design background. You have to look at it from both ends, your heart must be in it. But if no one can relate to it at all, I was not successful. It is important to look at both sides. It is important to communicate.

Maeda

OK. You are talking about being a professional, responsible designer.

Viegas

Well, if no one understands the message...

Endter

It has to be a two way process. The solitary process is not that useful.

Maeda

(Tools vs end process) Chloe?

Chao

No comment... (after more prodding from maeda) I don't think there is a clear definition of tool.

Maeda

(stops kram from starting new discussion) Before we start something new: We have the tool. It takes X as input, The tool f(x) produces y. It is the outcome. Chloe was touching on the possibility that Y is changing even when X is constant. The machine serves up all kinds of things. An interactive system. An infinitely changing system. When the model of tool is different... Chloe talked about the enbodiment of process. It is a means. If you make a road through the jungle, other people can follow you.

Kram

On a computer, a tool is creating a new machine. After effects is an excellent machine at doing video effects.

White

(here john asks me what a tool is, I offer Webster as a point of refrence):

tool \'tu:l\ n [ME, fr. OE to-l; akin to OE tawian to prepare for use - more] 
   at TAW 1a: an instrument (as a hammer) used or worked by hand : 
   IMPLEMENT 1b1: the cutting or shaping part in a machine or machine tool 
   1b2: a machine for shaping metal : MACHINE TOOL 2a: an instrument or 
   apparatus used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a 
   vocation or profession {a scholar's books are ~s} 2b: a means to an end 3: 
   one who is used or manipulated by another : DUPE

Maeda

The majority of people I talk to all have interests in design. But the majority want to make tools for designers. Who here is interested in making tools for graphic designers? (no one speaks up). Well maybe this group is different.

Interval

Making tools for consumers. ...

Maeda

Or tools to augment people?

Interval

More about revealing peoples ability to express themself.

Maeda

Like a mirror?

Interval

No. More about projecting something outward from yourself, not like a mirror.

Maeda

But then is the expression really yours?

Interval

Well, I think that this is a deep philosophical question... [something about finger paint?]

Kram

What's wrong with finger paint! [thread dissolves]

Grenby

I don't not want to make a tool right now, though I have nothing against it.

Keays

The two are not mutually exclusive. Just a different end use. Each is an equally valid channel of creativity.

Rosenberger

I've never understood the difference in meaning between craftsman and artist.

Snibbe

Here's an interesting perspective. The motion phone one a prize as a work of art, but I think it is a tool. The jury decided that if a tool imparted a new vision, then it can be seen as a work of art. This was in 1996.

Golan

I have to disagree. I think motion phone is a work of art. Systems that interact are interesting; call it a tool if you like. A tool usually implies a goal, but the motion phone is a work of art because it expands our ideas of art making.

Maeda

For those of you who don't know, motion phone is a system for sort of painting with motion and connecting multiple people to this space.

Rosenberger

(to Snibbe) So why is that a tool?

Snibbe

It is a tool because when you arrive there is nothing there, just a blank canvas. But then you author something that remains after you leave.

Maeda

[talks about Kram and Transducer, about it being a tool versus his 'performance' with Transducer at a talk a few days ago.

Kram

Motion phone not a tool. It is poor at making just anything in general.

Snibbe

I don't think generality is a function of tool. A tool can be as general or specific as you want it.

Kram

We generally think that way of tools on the computer - others to do abstracted tasks.

Maeda

You could make a commercial with the motion phone.

Kram

It is not a great tool for that.

Maeda

So here's a question. Can the people that make fine vilons actually play them?

Snibbe

They can play the instrument well enough to test them.

Geilfuss

This seems to me to be an age old question. This was covered early in the century by people like Duchamp, and they found that it has nothing to do with tool at all. The difference between artist and crafstman difference is intent. There are so many ways to look at it. I'm not sure exactly why we are talking about this.

Maeda

About the tool making thing [...] You can be a great tool maker. And that's great. Or you can be a great user of the tool. And that's great. But you can be both a great maker of the tool and a great user of the tool...

Golem

How about this John -- what is the opposiete of making a tool?

Maeda

The issue is numbers! We know what someone good at using photoshop can do. We know what someone good at making photoshop can do. But we don't know what a person cabably of both using and making a tool like photoshop can do. There has not been that much validity to this combined approach.

Geilfuss

(voicing dissent) For a long time graphic artics needed to understand the process to get things done. That is what you are talking about. But you are saying there have not been people like that.

Maeda

I feel that because we do not have that element, the issue of high quality ...

Kram

The only people connected to the medium are making the tools. Making tools, if done well, can be art. There are very few programmers that express themselves. 99.5% of progrmmers are making tools.

Maeda

The stakes are so big now. The husband wife team in the 60s is gone. There is now so much technology - so much to learn and so much to do. It is hard to keep up. I think the key is that the bridging effect is very necessary, conecting the two worlds. These things drive me crazy.

Graphic designers were very close with the process. Now you can interact in a way that you could not before. The things we are starting to do here rely heavily on interacti8on with the user. You can use the computer to interact with who is looking at your peice. We keep calling them tools, but this has a imited meaning that we are giving these ... works. This is the firstt time we can make the process matter. JM: Back up. The first point, noted that the quality of printwork has never been better with the fcomputer. Perfection of the medium through digital technology. The new processes of digieal tech. Interaction...

Viegas

About transducer. I don't think it is a tool. The beauty of it is the interaction with it. The process of how you interact with it is something that could not be done before. How do you know what the high standards are? You don't. The interaction is another variable to add.

Maeda

We don't understand yet.

People come to the lab wanting tools, They see everything as a tool. That is all people know. You are saying this is more of a work of something.

Kram

We've talked about this before. Giving up accountability. If you can make something ugly with it, then it is a tool. If you are making an environment where they can make their own kind of creatitivy, which you can not control, this is a creative tool. But you are always in there.

Snibbe

Well, I wouldn't say ugly or bad, but as giving people the ability of expressing themselves. It is a reflection of the person that made it.

Maeda

So can that be masked out? [people's ability to do bad or plain things in a tool]

Snibbe

I don't think so. A pencil is a great example. I would love to invent that.

Endter

If you make a really good tool then you have taken the point of view out of it. If the tool is objective, people can use in all kinds of ways.

Interval

That notion of objectiviy is totoally defunct. A pencil is an expression that lines should be dark and dry.

Endter

I mean, not that type of objectiviy. Once you launch this tool, it can take on a live of its own. You are relinquishing control.

Spitzer

The way a person understands a pencil reflects how they send out what was there before. How a person understands the technology and dissects it.

Endter

Appropiate it.

Rosenberger

Degrees of freedom? Motion phone is used to create strokes and different people do the same thing. But it's not extensible. All of the potentials are in the tool itself. Photoshop has more potentials. Definition of tool has to do with economics and the degrees of freedom.

Interval

A pencil is infinitely expressible.

Maeda

But isn't that because we are given this at age 1. We treat it differently.

Interval

A pencil is miraclous is because it is expressible. I would not give my 1 year old a die cutter. I would give him a pencil.

Geilfuss

I think that [the expression of individual] is a big part of it.

Interval

Art used to be about the composition of shapes like rectangles. Now it is about the compisition of systems.

Maeda

What do you think Tom? What are you typing over there? [:-)]

White

[Here I look up and refocus my eyes, and digest what I have heard. I go back to the idea of an audience and talk about the difference between creating for a huge audience, for your friends, for yourself now, or for yourself in 10 years. I suggest that the earlier discussion by Fernanda was over simplified in that communicating to an audience could many many things]

[John asks Interval for a comment on my rambling, and they admit confusion, so I rephrase it into a distilled question for them] Do you think the idea of an intended audience is tied up in the definition of tool or do you think that making a tool can be done completely independent of an intended audience?

Interval

I think the idea of an audience is indepent of the definition of a tool. Not knowing who your audience is is part of the joy when your tool is later used by others.

Maeda

So it's like making a toy?

Interval

Toys can't be twisted as much.

Maeda

This issue of tools. When defining yourself as creative individual, this issue is important. This distincition will be there for years.

Interval

[about talking to a friend about these issues] She said that she created art for herself, but her design was for others.

Maeda

Phillip?

Tiongson

[phillip has just come in. He starts talking about the smiling printing man that he was visiting to get the MAS962 cards printed] He said he had to learn quark express four. Listening to him talk about the craft itself was savory. He is very close to his craft. It was fun to see someone who loves to do what he does.

Maeda

This issue of who is your audience. Yourself or external world?

Interval

Here is an interesting point coming full circle. Original computer interfaces had strange parameters and were hard for non programmers to use. [...] (to Maeda) You are suggesting, use your intuition...

Maeda

So I get a call from Inke degign from someone writing an article on interaction design. She asks: what is it? Is it like Donald Norman? (author of The Design of Everyday Things) He's a clutz! He blames everything on designers. The whole notion that designers is stupid is wrong! The whole notion that design/art is in a state of disarray because the understanding of the medium not well understood. Unless designers emerge with understanding of medium, we won't see good design. As a designer, you must ask, what is important to you. Do you want to create for yourself? For money? You are your best audience. Tap into the medium. Listen to it.

Keays

Is it possible for one person to fully understand to the medium? This used to be possible in print. But now certain areas must be delegated out. Is this a loss of quality?

Maeda

If you are fanitical, yes. If not, no. I am fanitical, so yes!

Spitzer

The analogy of the designer printer, the designer can learn more about the process from the printer....

Maeda

Thie period might be some stange phase where technology has shot way too far ahead...

Keays

I think the gap is going to get wider and wider. It will get harder for anyone to know it all. (then in answer to something from Maeda) I will be in a state of increasing torment.

Maeda

I think interval is interesting as a last stand...

Interval

I think you are being overly optimistic. Look at the Bauhaus and what they did understanding form, but today we still have all kinds of examples of bad industrial design.

Maeda

I think Bauhaus could not hold on to ideas. They were limited to materials they had; they could not execute perfectly. Now, we have perfect medium. I think that Bauhaus was an alpha version - too hard to disseminate philosphy. There were not many algorithms that came from Bauhaus.

Interval

(in retort to Maeda) Do you think you are trying to teach formuls? I don't think so. I think you are trying to teach your students intuition.

Maeda

Paul Rand said last week you cannot teach intuition! But I am trying my best to teach these things.

Thanks everyone.