▶️ I'm overwhelmed by the amount of tools, which ones should I really use?
My two cents
The tools that I usually the most often are just a few:
Interviews to understand people
Workshops to bring people together and make them find solutions together
Sticky notes to map and synthesize information
Writing to understand what I learned, share what I learned, propose plans for the future.
I don't use so many tools myself. I still like to look at what are the new tools that come out because I'm a bit of a geek. But I don't change my toolbox as often.
It's not the number of tools you use that matters is how good you know them
A carpenter can build a house with just a few tools, it's not 200 different tools, it's a few dozens. In the world of design it's not so different.
What make the difference is if you know the tools very well, then you can use them a lot and to create very good stuff.
The love for tools might be related to the years of experience
I've changed a bit with the years, five years ago, I would say that I was still in a phase where whenever I had to design a workshop, I wanted it to be totally different from each workshop I made before.
Call it being older or more mature. I don't know. But I'm now in a phase where instead of just rebuilding new things again and again and again, I'm like, oh, I created this thing and so I'm gonna reuse it maybe 5, 6, 7, 10 times and tweak it a little bit.
When you start, you're in a period where you just want to try everything, when you are arrive at the stage where you have tried a lot, you see what really works.
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