#learntosee

I mean, we both agree that this “13″ looks exactly like a “B”. And I’m sure that you are now looking at the image because at first you didn’t notice it was a 13. 

Today our resourceful teachers recommended us a beautiful article entitled “Learning to See” where we got to delve deeper into the mindset of a designer and their perception of the world.

About perception, a relatable thing that Anaïs Nin said is “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”, and that’s true. Skilled and expert designers learn how to see things through the eyes of their users, but it takes time and practice and empathy and open-mindedness to acknowledge different point of views, take them into account and build something starting from other people’s needs, not from our personal taste and ideas.

But what does Paul Klee mean when he says “see more with one eye, feel with the other”?

To “see more” means being able of grasping a level of reality that might be intangible to anyone else, finding little details that others tend to overlook. It is “ultimately a matter of trained taste, or what German speakers call Fingerspitzengefühl”, literally “finger-tip-feeling”. 

A beautiful illustration that the article provided to depict this concept is this portrait of the typographer Jan Tschichold.

At the same time, designers should be mindful of this:  “Tools need to work for those who use them.”

A beautiful, sophisticated product that doesn’t work as it should is not a good product. A product based on designers’ assumptions is biased and therefore not useful for those who’re eventually going to use it.

Designer should never completely lose their ability to see things as a customer would: training our eyes to be sharper and detect small details doesn’t mean getting rid of our experience as users.

Once we learn how to find the right balance between the two, that’s when we start building products that are as useful as they are aesthetically delightful. 

I’ll end this post by recommending the article - whether you are a senior, junior, aspiring designer or not, I can assure you that it will be worthy of your time! - and leaving you with the quote that encloses its core message: