"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." | ||
| --Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller | ||
There is a cemetery in Watertown, MA with a grave marker that reads, "Call me trim tab. Bucky." This is the final resting place of Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller, an American architect, author, designer and inventor. He is perhaps best known for developing the structural mathematics of the geodesic dome, an example of which can be seen in the following image, otherwise known as Spaceship Earth from Disney World's Epcot Center theme park.
Fuller was a problem solver and a big thinker who took on very challenging problems, concepts and ideas with passion and a perspective very reminiscent of the UX mindset.
"If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contriving's as constituting the only means for solving a given problem." | ||
| --R. Buckminster Fuller | ||
Fuller understood that solving problems and reaching conclusions meant challenging what we think we know and learning more about what we don't in order that we might find what Fuller referred to as the non-obvious and thus far better solutions:
"Everything you've learned in school as obvious becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines." | ||
| --R. Buckminster Fuller | ||
To better explain this type of problem solving mindset, Fuller used the metaphor of a "trim tab," a small rudder connected to a larger rudder found on ships and airplanes. Here is an example of a trimtab:
A trim tab is used to turn a very large object with minimal effort, as Wikipedia explains:
"The use of trim tabs significantly reduces a pilot's workload during continuous maneuvers…allowing them to focus their attention on other tasks such as traffic avoidance or communication with air traffic control." | ||
| --Trim tab, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | ||
Another reason for Fuller's interest in the trim tab was its small size compared to the larger whole. Based on its relative size compared to the rest of the ship or plane, the trim tab can easily go unnoticed even though it is integral to the overall solution. If we look at the trim tab from a perspective of project design and problem solving, we see how easy it can be to miss the most important aspect of a design solution if we are not looking in the right places. As a result, siloed teams that turn hard problems into quick, low cost solutions while excluding UX can never truly design the best solutions because the best solutions are often the most non-obvious. To find them requires observation, collaboration, creativity and a creative, open mindset that allows good design solutions to happen.
"[Get] rid of a little nonsense, [get] rid of things that don't work and aren't true until you start to get that trim tab motion. It works every time. That's the grand strategy you're going for." | ||
| --R. Buckminster Fuller | ||
It is not much of a leap to suggest that the UX mindset is our trim tab, an approach that significantly reduces workload, improves efficiency and increases effectiveness. The trim tab may also be the mechanism for turning large, siloed teams into collaborative partners helping to turn large problems into viable solutions that are more efficient, effective and satisfying. This, Fuller said, is the grand strategy we are going for.