Sketch Pad or Formatter
07 Jul 2017Love to Doodle ?
I tweeted a workflow doodle of what I was doing geo-wise on my day job. The workflow aka algorithm, did produce the desired results when I executed it. In retrospect however I self queried if I really had to and if I did enjoy doodling. What was wrong with working with models (ESRI’s Model Builder) on the computer? Was doodling not ‘wasting’ precious time …since I had to recreate the thing in the geo-software later on anyway? Add to that I was the sole workman on this project so I had the liberty to transfer thought to implementation without the need to bounce the idea off a co-worker. Well, white boards are a great idea, especially when there’s need for team collaboration. Not to mention the departure from the boxing effect a computer system/ software tool may have on the thinking process.
The Handicap
Mine wasn’t (isn’t) just a matter of preferring to doodle on papyrus first. I then realised the doodling was born in the past. Dating back to the time I was first introduced to the word processor, Corel Word perfect on a Windows 95 laptop, circa. year 2000. A computer, I was made to believe, …and also observed many treating it so, was a formatter of work. It was meant to make one’s work look neater, cleverer, add fancy text formatting to that and you had a document you could look at and admire the ‘look’ of things, never mind the worth of what was being presented. So I would spend hours, writing out stuff on paper first for later transfer unto ‘The Computer’. (…well call it electronic typewriter).
The idea that a personal computer was a tool, crept in two years later when I was introduced to programming..in Pascal. Only then did it start to dawn that you could have additional text on the screen as you interacted with the PC. But then, PCs at the College were communal, so back to doodling again…for when I get a chance at the keyboard.
So that’s how I fell in love with doodling. One shouldn’t take their mistakes with to the computer you see. So in working the habit off, it’s let’s muddle on the machine. It is a tool and It’s not like it may explode or anything.