I’ve written on this blog before about my Dad, a joiner by trade. A recent tweet has given me cause to write about him again.
Dad died just as I was waking up as an adult – not in my teens, but in my twenties, as I finally started to think about design as a career rather than a meander through a series of jobs. I was a late starter, but thankfully, eventually came to have great pride in the profession.
Over the years there have been, and continue to be many days when I have imaginary conversations with Dad, trying to work out what his advice might be on matters both professional and personal. Dad would not have claimed to be universally liked, but he commanded respect; more than anything, people trusted him. And while we had any number of differences over the years typical of a father-and-son relationship, I would never have questioned Dad’s judgement. He was ‘true North’ on an ethical compass, to me and to many others.
One element of the legacy he left me was that I strive to exercise the same judgement and sense of integrity whenever I can.
Bill Monro had huge pride in his work and his tradesman’s background never left him. His role in later years, that of a Clerk of Works, brought him into contact with any number of trades, all of whom he could relate to because of his background in the Belfast shipyard and later the construction industry. He said that doing anything was worth doing well. Doing it thoroughly. Doing it properly.
As I move deeper into the area of user experience design, I often wonder what Dad would make of it, when so many even within the digital design industry have issues with the concept. I remember the difficulty I had in explaining what a Graphic Designer was; I can’t imagine what he would have made of something called ‘User Experience’.
And yet I know that to Dad the idea of building something without first specifying it thoroughly would have been a completely alien concept. As a joiner the old maxim of measuring twice, cutting once was an unflagging principle. I like to think that by talking in terms of thorough research, comprehensive planning and effective execution we would have found much to agree on.
I have a suspicion, though, he might have raised an eyebrow at user experience even being a thing: “You mean understanding the problem and making the results fit for purpose..? Hmm.” To Dad’s generation, these fundamentals were the minimum price of entry. Customer experience would have seemed an equally perplexing idea; surely good customer service is a prerequisite to trade?
I get a degree of comfort from connecting what I do to the skills and motivations my Father had. And so this post’s title is not a misquoting of the old idiom, but a suggestion of common purpose. Amidst the talk of a return to craft in web design, I have a personal motivation in wanting to achieve it.