Pairing on Everyday Tasks
Have you ever done yard work, cleaned your house or move some furniture by yourself and then all of a sudden someone joins in to help you? Don’t you just love that feeling? Now you know it won’t take as long, you get an extra boost of energy and the sum of your work will be greater than the individual parts.
As I’ve worked in Product and UX, I’ve found that pairing with another designer works on my productivity and thought process the same way it works when I’m developing software. I’m able to simply accomplish more work with another person than if we had both gone off for a couple days and had a meeting afterwards.
Now in some cases it won’t make sense, such as implementing a sketch in Photoshop won’t be as productive when both designers have similar skill sets but it’s definitely possible to pick up a few tricks from each other if you haven’t already established equilibrium. The same can be said for a couple developers wasting away on CSS tweaks for IE. It’s not going to be much more productive with two developers getting frustrated at IE than with one since the process for dealing with it can be mostly trial and error.
It would still be interesting to try pairing with traditional professions. For electricians and plumbers, the process of a journeyman but also having multiple professionals working on the same project is normal. It’s normal to see multiple technicians working on the same problem. But what about accounting? Or marketing?
Maybe I’ll find out one day. I’ll probably need to create a company first though.
Happy pairing!