09 / Autonomy
Whenever possible, a good system should make my involvement unnecessary.
Small things can make this idea very clear.
An image too large for WordPress.
A PDF that needs compressing before it can be sent.
At first, colleagues and clients would send me the files. I would process them and send them back.
Problem solved.
Until the next file.
The work was not particularly difficult. But it always involved a handoff: ask me, wait, receive the result.
Eventually I stopped looking only at the file.
I looked at that handoff.
If the same operations kept coming up, I could build a tool simple enough for the person who needed it to use directly.
That is how some small image and PDF compression tools came about.
First for internal use. Then to share with the people I work with.
The interesting result is more than the time I save.
The person facing the problem can solve it without waiting for me.
Not every problem can be made this self-contained.
But when it can, that seems a good direction to design towards.
A tool is doing its job when it no longer needs me to be there.