I just read a book. This is not in itself an unusual thing, I read a book every couple of days. The unusual thing is that I want to tell you about it.
Three Pipe Problems is not a long book – at a modest 106 pages it fits comfortably into a biggish pocket or a smallish bag. Where it’s big is in the ideas department.
It has helped me in developing the idea that as a writer, and consultant, I’m also a designer. I design solutions, and solutions aren’t about elegant architecture or perfect systems – they are about making things work for people.
Jason’s book is all about focusing on the people who will be affected by your solution, understanding how and why they will use it and focusing on the needs of the user rather than technical elegance… although of course the Holy Grail would be to achieve a technically elegant solution that also ticks the user boxes.
Inevitably, I am forced to try to bring this all back to my core business – which is writing. It’s not enough to write a paper which answers the questions – in my ‘design’ I try extra hard to create work that is easy to read. That involves design elements like white space, choosing the right font and illustrations and producing documents that are well laid out.
If the document is a proposal, it has to be functional – that means leaving space for people to make notes and making sure that it’s obvious when you answered questions they asked. It’s about indexing and footnoting and layout, but fundamentally, document design is about making things that people want to read.
And that’s a strength of Three Pipe Problems. The design and layout are pleasing to the eye. The hardcover has a really nice tactile finish, and the graphics help to illustrate and reinforce key points in the text.
If you enjoy books, consider buying this one. Who knows what problems it might help you solve?
http://threepipeproblems.com