Escaping Tool Obsession: Why Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever
A few days ago, Richard Mills asked on LinkedIn:
“What happens if you take Figma away from your design team?”
Follow-ups that matter:
- Can they reframe the business problem?
- Align stakeholders in a workshop?
- Sketch with users, not just polish pixels?
- Defend why a feature exists?
- Challenge the roadmap’s assumptions?
If yes, you’ve got designers who think. If not, you’ve got delivery without direction.
Same energy outside design: take the SUV out of a city commute. Does life collapse—or do better options show up? We’ve normalized overkill and forgot how powerful simple can be.
Fundamentals > tools
The Carpenter’s Paradox: rely on power tools long enough and a hand saw feels alien. When the power’s out, does the work stop?
Klaus Krippendorff, in The Semantic Turn, reminds us that design is ultimately about creating meaning, not just operating tools.
Don Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things, puts it plainly: design should fit people, not force people to fit the tool.
Tech version: Azure/Vercel/Adobe/GCP by default—yet who can still spin up a tiny VPS over SSH?
Design version: who can sketch a sitemap or flow without a plugin?
Dieter Rams’ timeless principle “less, but better” applies here: tools should serve clarity, not complexity. Or as AG Fronzoni argued, design is a commitment to society — not just a client brief or feature set.
Don’t be the person who can microwave but can’t fry an egg. Fundamentals first.
Why I pick bikes over planes
Bikes and kayaks are human-scale MVPs: understandable, repairable, empowering. You feel the bumps, read the weather, adapt in real time—no autopilot to dull your senses.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome vs. Getting Moving:
People buy a €2,000 gravel bike to “finally tour,” ride twice, then stall. I toured 500km on a €250 folding bike—cheap to lock, easy to fix, good enough to learn what mattered.
John Maeda’s design law captures this perfectly: “Subtract the obvious, add the meaningful.” A modest tool, used well, will get you further than an expensive one you never start with.
Rule of thumb: start small, move early, upgrade when reality demands it.
More in my series The Power of Tiny.
The map isn’t the territory
Tools are maps. Useful, but not the journey. Tourists follow the route; explorers ask, wander, and understand.
Krippendorff’s work reminds us: the map is not the territory. The tool isn’t the outcome. Meaning comes from the journey and the questions we ask along the way.
Too many teams optimize for speed over insight and end up efficient at the wrong thing.
The gardener’s lens
Great gardeners don’t start with the fanciest irrigation—they read soil, seasons, signals. Tools amplify judgment; they don’t replace it.
Designer Thomas Heatherwick takes a similar approach: trusting the signals you see and touch before over-automating the process.
Same in ag-tech: farmers want “more automation, fewer features” they can trust. “Shit in, shit out” still applies—without fundamentals, dashboards lie. Recent research backs this up.
When tools become crutches
If every problem turns into a UI screen, you’re designing the tool, not the solution. Don’t let your stack become a bloated Swiss Army knife—many blades, none sharp.
Itamar Medeiros points out that great designers move from tool execution to strategic influence—shaping the “why” before they touch the “how.”
Wrap-up
Whether I’m fixing a bike, paddling, or sketching a flow, I chase methods that give clarity and ownership.
Give a kid crayons and you get a storybook. Give a pro every tool and they might still stall without a question worth answering.
My best work started in messy conversations, whiteboards, and honest field notes—not Figma.
Avoid chasing shiny tools, churning out endless mockups without feedback, or hiding behind jargon. Instead, start with a real problem, sketch and brainstorm quickly, test early, favor clear flows, and choose tools that accelerate learning—like pen and paper, v0, or quick Figma prototypes.
As Dieter Rams would say: good design is as little design as possible.
As John Maeda reminds us: subtract the obvious, add the meaningful.
AI is great. The only metric that matters: did we solve the user’s problem?
Want tactics, not vibes? Check out my favorite UX heuristics and methods.
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