Hans Henrik Heming,

13 July 2006



Hans Henrik H. Heming

Posted in Design Thinking

Design Observer has republished an article by Michael McDonough listing
the top 10 things they never taught Michael in design school. Design is
a fundamental capability in a complex world and I think you’ll find
Michael’s list useful. Here are the bullet points. For the explanations
I recommend you pop on over to Design Observer.

  1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
  2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
  3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
  4. Don’t over-think a problem.
  5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
  6. Don’t forget your goal.
  7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
  8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
  9. It all comes down to output.
  10. The rest of the world counts.

I got it from Anecdote

3 comments so far


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topo gps usa July 19th, 2006 at 11:18 pm

Start with what you know…then forget everything you know, unless you want to recreate what already exists, or make incremental changes to existing work. Breakthrough creativity, what I believe should be the goal of every design project, requires a clean slate. Yes, acknowledge the knowns, but don’t let them get in your way. The fact that you can identify them is reason to question them.

Chas Martin July 25th, 2006 at 11:24 pm

Nice list. There appear to be some parallels between design and corporate info technology with the possible exception that talent accounts for less than 10% of the success of corp IT projects…

Troy Worman November 15th, 2006 at 7:29 pm

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