Creative Strategy
March 16, 2021
Process

When you change your process, you change what you make.

Open Reference

Coffee roasting is all about the process.

I roast coffee as a hobby on a 1kg gas roaster; it's a shrunk-down commercial-style machine. I've roasted about 300lbs of coffee at this point.

On every roast, I track my process with a roasting profile.

A roasting profile is a picture of what happens during a roast, the temperature, the gas, the airflow. The roasting profile captures all the variables that change the taste. It's quite a bit more complex than light, medium, or dark roast.

With the same raw green coffee, you can get wildly different outcomes by changing the process.

In this way, the process is making.

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In my product and design work, being told what to do can trigger the creative rebel in me; I want to push back and question every framework and assumption.

A process often comes across as an outside force, mostly getting in the way and telling me what to do.

Yet, as the designs my team and I make become a reality, more people need to be involved in growing and iterating. A process is required.

My aim then becomes adding and accepting only enough new processes to collaborate with more people. This is part of the joy and challenge of maturing a product ( and maybe people too).

Because when you change your process, you change what you make.

In this way, the process is making.

It's better to be part of making a process than fighting against change that's needed.

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