Tool snobbery

I’ve been guilty of being a tool snob before. Thought bubbles: ‘You’re using Publisher? Yuck.’ ‘Framemaker... bleh.’ ‘InDesign is so much better than PageMaker.’ ‘PowerPoint—give me a break.’ Ok, I have continuing moments of tool snobbery. I know we’ll never all agree, so why do we get downright defensive about our favorite tools? The hunkered-down Quark fans are never going to move the InDesign, unless they have to (and they’ll grumble for months, before finally, quietly moving to the dark side and denying they thought Quark was better).

Does tool snobbery hurt our instructional design? It shouldn’t be about the tools we use. But how much does it affect what we do? In an ideal world, we would have access to all of the tools, and we could use right tool for the right project every time—and we would know which tool is best for the situation and know how to use it. In the real world, we don’t have budgets for that. We generally make the best of what we have, and when extra money is found we whip out our wish lists and cross our fingers.

What are the dangers of making do? We stick with the same tool all the time because it’s familiar, we know it, and we don’t want to or have time to learn a new one. We can also waste a lot of time trying to get a tool to do something it really wasn’t meant to do.

How can we avoid this, especially when we don’t have much choice in the tools that are available to us? I try to keep my focus on the design and not the tools, but it’s hard—I love tools. They’re neat, and I love to play. And, I may think the best design requires complex branching and pretty high-fidelity graphics, but we don’t have the tools or the time for that.

It’s a constant juggling act—what would be the best design for the learner + what we have the time and/or capability to create + what I’d like to try as a designer + what the sponsor wants + what will work in the learner’s environment. The tool is a piece of the act, but it isn’t the whole show. If PowerPoint will work, then use PowerPoint. If an interactive PDF will work, then use it. I don’t think I’ll ever lose my tool snobbery, but I need to put it aside at times. I need to find a convenient place to put it though.