5.2 Mini Brief 3: Workflow
To begin to understand how a workflow works we have to know what it means; a workflow is the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion. Now thats the textbook definition on what a workflow is but more specifically what is a design workflow? A design workflow varies from person to person but a general one goes as such:
Research - (Primary/ Secondary) Historical, Contextual, Visual
Creative - Ideas, Concepts, Strategy, Exploration, Experimentation
Design - Developing, Refining, Critiquing, Curating, Deciding
Production - Typesetting, Art-working, Printing, Building, Coding, Details
Documentation - Photographs of the work and Written processes
Admin & Management - (Ongoing) Planning, Thinking, Talking
How is my workflow? What do I do similarly and what to I do differently? What do I struggle with and what are my strengths? Here's a breakdown of my personal work flow with the strengths and weaknesses:
Research:
I personally love the research aspect of any project– I'd say the research aspect of my personal workflow seems to be one of my strengths. To answer those questions I actually have to recognise my own workflow; what seems to be good or bad. I could go more in depth within the topics I research and what kind of research whether thats primary or secondary. For example:
- Reading more books and personal accounts
- Reading more articles and interviews
Creative:
The creative part of the process is great too– I really like the experimentation and the idea generation. A lot of my process includes sketches and idea generations; I like to try and visualise what I'm doing. I would like to try and experiment more with different techniques. I want to explore more different applications as well as re-visiting thing's I've already used.
Design:
The design part of the process consists of developing, refining and making. I do really like putting all my ideas and research into one thing– it definitely pays off. I think the main struggle would be the indecisiveness and trying to definitively pick what idea I want to choose. I think that I just need to be more confident in what I want to do as well as that I could develop multiple ideas and pick from them.
Production:
The production aspect of the workflow process I think is one of my main struggles because of the fact that it requires a lot more focus on the content and design. I think I struggle most with time management but also the more tedious, repetitive tasks like typesetting and art-working mainly because I struggle to focus on those thing. I completely agree that those things are important to the design process and I do like doing them but I just find it hard to focus on them.
Documentation:
The documentation part of the process is almost a round up of everything that has been researched and designed. For me personally I do think that recording processes and research helps me collate everything that I've done. It makes it easier to keep track of thoughts and ideas. The easiest way, I'd say, to gather your ideas is with a process document; a process document is a collection of idea generation, images and references in chronological order that represent your process.
Admin and management:
Admin and management is my biggest struggle as it includes things like thinking, planning, talking and time management; I would say both talking and time management are my biggest struggles. To explain what I mean by talking is communicating and sharing ideas with others and what I mean by this being a struggle is I just struggle to socialise to put it bluntly. What have I been doing to try and improve? I've been talking more to others and asking them f0r another point of view on my work; it isn't something that can change overnight but I'm working towards it. Onto the my biggest struggle, time management, and again this is something I'm working on. As of late, to try and combat it, I've been doing things as soon as I get the task/breif. I've been trying to time block and give myself specific days for specific tasks but again it's not something that I think I can 'cure'.
