What is your goal?

You know those days when it seems like you are just not getting anywhere?!

I have spent most of today working on something that was supposed to be fun (planning my upcoming trip to Boston on my new spreadsheet program) and yet I feel like I've gotten nothing done. My husband came home, and I was trying to explain to him why I was feeling frustrated. I couldn't quite verbalize where things had gone wrong -- I mean, generally speaking, spending time organizing, trip-planning, or working with my new computer is fun!

As we talked, it came to me. I had not defined what the goal of my spreadsheet was! I was unsure what it was supposed to look like, what success would be, and what I was after! Somewhere between wanting to "play" with the cool template and wanting to organize my upcoming trip, I had been trying to design something useful with no defined goal in mind!! And as I thought about this, I realized that this is kind of a pattern with me and designing things. I spent all summer working on websites, and thinking back on it, I was doing the same thing. In the end, I think I got things mostly figured out, but I could have saved myself a lot of "development" time if I had spent a little more time in the "analysis" and "design" phases. Writing stuff on 3 x 5 cards and rearranging them all over the dining room table just seems like so much work -- but I am now seeing that it is way more work to have to keep reinventing your design every time you come upon some new information that doesn't quite fit in right.

Wow. Information Design. Hmmm. . .