Lessons from the Kitchen
by Ryan Freitas
I was pleased to be asked to contribute an article to Ambidextrous Magazine (from Stanford’s d.school) in their upcoming “Food” issue (available soon). What’d I write about? Well, it’s been a number of years since I stopped cooking professionally, but I have been struck by what I think some interaction designers could learn from watching how a restaurant kitchen operates. My original pitch sounded like this:
Chefs organize their cooks and their space with a few key principles in mind: maximizing consistency of product, ensuring creative freedom to experiment, and encouraging effective problem solving under incredibly stressful conditions… For those who manage creative organizations, the professional kitchen can provide inspiration for how to balance these principles effectively.
If you’d like to read the article, it’s available here as a three page PDF. If you take the opportunity to read it, please let me know what you think. Huge thanks to Amanda Willoughby and Evany Thomas for their careful editing work, and to Lora Oehlberg and Mike Pihulic from Ambidextrous for making it a pleasure to contribute to the magazine.
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July 27th, 2007 at 6:18 am
I’ve now read the pdf and very good it is too.. it provoked this response! http://snipurl.com/1otwj which builds on deciding which sort of design project you are tackling and what key skills are needed to make a great job of it.
July 27th, 2007 at 6:24 am
I meant to include this link too http://snipurl.com/1otwz which talks of
1. Stability and resilience are opposed
2. There is a huge difference between a chef and a user of recipe books.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Great stuff, Ryan. It rings entirely true. I feel like there’s also an analogy to be made about “user research” here somewhere. It seems to me that the most innovative chefs tend to wander, combine influences, and create not based on comment cards, but observations of what works and what doesn’t. Then design proposals are vetted as specials or tasting menus, and eventually added to a repetoire. The very best “patterns” are added to cookbooks.
July 27th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Jim, thank you for the link, I’ll give it a read this weekend.
Mike, I completely agree with your analogy. Your “user research” is very much in line with the way most of the cooks I know seek out inspiration. Jason (who I mentioned in the article) was just sent to France for a month to live, eat and work in environments that are sure to be reflected in the menus he dreams up in the months and years to come. (I know, rough gig, huh?) Good observation about the patterns making their way into cookbooks - effectively, they’re artifacts of all the inspiration and experimentation that have worked their way into the vernacular.
Thanks for the comments, and glad you dug the article.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:46 pm
[…] a chow hound, but not that he had worked in a kitchen for a long time. I recommend you check out this newly minted article where Ryan applies some of the lessons learned, ahem, under fire, to design work. I love this […]
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:01 am
As an interaction designer, avid cook (and eater) I found your cooking/design concept right on, and also found myself paralleling my own experiences in the kitchen with your thoughts! Bravo. Nice to know that I, in my early days as a starving artist, was not the only one that turned to culinary disciplines as a way of feeding our creative thoughts and gullets. Bon Appetit!
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Thanks, Ryan–the article informed my post today–
August 6th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Ryan, a wonderful and excellently succinct article! Thank you for sharing! It always amazes me how interaction design tends to draw the most interesting and inquisitive minds from all sorts of fields … cooking now among those on my list. The lessons you’ve extracted from your experience in both areas ring true.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Thanks for writing the article for us, Ryan!
August 12th, 2007 at 1:36 am
i’m also a cooking & food addict
I ve already discussed often with big chief and always amazed by their generosity. The desire more than anything giving pleasure to their guest. We could also learn a lot of them in UX design : some restaurants really offer such an experience. You re welcomed, they offer you a place full of little details, confortable chairs, nice service, nice flowers, all is selected very careffully. Meal is tasty, delicious, inventive and beautifull to watch ….
In the old conflict beautifull vs usable, big chief now since a long time it’s beautiffull and tasty
thanks for your article
August 13th, 2007 at 10:40 am
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August 24th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
[…] idea comes from Ryan Freitas in an article comparing designers and chefs. For all four kitchen analogies, read the three page article Cooking Lessons for Designers (PDF […]
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