Writing is a tool

Textile 2024 week 02

Design, especially that of software and services, is generally thought of as a visual craft. Whilst a fair observation, it is nuanced in many ways. Software is more a set of processes rather than screens, making sequence and situational understanding paramount. This requires an additional tool to explain things, namely writing. At Textile, we do a lot of writing, not just because we work largely asynchronously across four continents, but because it is a very powerful tool. It is tool as such that not only helps document thoughts, but also a tool that helps clarify thinking not just for the colleague reading about an idea or proposed solution, but for the writer. Writing things out lets you talk to yourself in a way, and forces you to be clear enough for someone to read and quickly understand. This is also the case for design. Our design work has a lot of writing output, potentially more than visual, but this helps not just explain the visual design, but also the intent, context and proposed solution.