tyler ↑ on Farcaster

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I think it was Pixar directors who ran a critique for their film had this rule when critiquing movies in development, they would offer pain points or problems (not solutions) - i.e. their feedback would be "I don't like the way this character meets this other character" and would not offer a 'solution' on how the characters would meet I thought this was interesting - why? Because ultimately the director that was working on the movie themselves would know the potential solution the best. I think this also generally works great with engineering as well. As a manager, you don't really offer the solution, you identify areas that aren't working because engineers on the task usually know the system significantly better that you do the higher up you go

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tyler ↑ pfp

Yep, Ed Catmull goes into that detail in Creativity, Inc. It’s true in design, too. It’s far better to ask someone about their context, problems, perspective, etc. When you ask most users for a solution, most of the time you get a very narrow suggestion. Not really in the “faster horses” sense, because they can give you wonderful clues, but they are not thinking about the system the same way you need to. Sometimes you can ask for solutions as ways to better understand the problem, but they should be input not direction. You can’t abdicate the responsibility of a design (or product or writing or engineering) decision to others.

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That whole team was completely goated

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