Does "graphic designer" essentially mean an artist whose job is to create aesthetically pleasing images, or does it encompass UI/UX as well? Most of the advice here seems to assume the latter, but I would not have thought that was the case.
Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#32Many people are making suggestions, I'll make a meta-suggestion:
Try and rank your options, and remember that it'll probably look like a power law distribution.
See the two graphs under this section: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/world-problems/#how-to-w...
Many of the companies suggested sound good, though if you're really optimizing for impact, the best one will probably have more impact than all the other suggestions combined. No pressure!
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#33Does "graphic designer" essentially mean an artist whose job is to create aesthetically pleasing images, or does it encompass UI/UX as well? Most of the advice here seems to assume the latter, but I would not have thought that was the case.
It depends on the job. Graphic Design / UI / UX / Product Design is undergoing a lot of terminology changes and uncertainty brought about by a lack of typical degree out of academia and a shortage of people working in the field. Many companies previously had graphic designers who de facto did the UI/UX/Product Design, while other companies are starting to break up/specify the roles.
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#34Healthcare user experience sucks. Last century kind of sucks. Find a job at Cerner or Epic who account for more than half of all hospital information systems and help clinicians avoid tragic errors, make faster and better decisions, understand health records more clearly, capture ideas/observations/memories.
I just left a healthcare company very similar to Cerner/Epic. The healthcare user experience sucks because the parties involved want it to suck. Older doctors are highly resistant to change and will look for any opportunity to condemn your product. The nurse's unions will stop you in your tracks for taking away duties that a nurse should be doing (we had a client tell us we couldn't auto-fill date fields with today's…
A friend of mine used to be a QA at a prominent children's hospital. The departmental interoperation was terrible[1], and every department used its own software. There was no hope of unifying the software, because every head of department had their own preferred software (often because of vendor kickbacks), and the hospital CEO was more interested in PR than managing. So any time an interdepartmental solution would be proposed at the heads-of-department meetings, any given head of department would nix it with "if we use that software, children will die". Of course everyone knows that was a lie, but that head of department was the final authority for it.
[1] A different friend was trying to get his son in for an appointment. The relevant department asked him to fax some forms to get the appointment; the phone was not enough and email wasn't an option. Fax! Forms were faxed... they asked them to be refaxed all in one stream! Faxed all together... they asked for the forms to be faxed in a particular order! At this point, he went to another hospital.
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#35I work for a company called Mark43. We make software to help police officers do their jobs more efficiently - our applications literally help save lives. There's a lot of interesting design challenges - for example, emergency dispatchers look at our CAD (computer aided dispatch) software for many hours on large monitors.. how do you design it so their eyes don't get tired? And then cops look at the same software on t…
I saw Mark43 a while ago and haven't been able to stop musing about it since - I think it would be rewarding work knowing if you excel at your job you're helping save lives and reduce risk!
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#36Ask HN: I am but a humble bus driver. I too wonder what world problems I should work on.
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#37(rather than just design some stuff for boring corporate companies)
Picking a company you can believe in and going to work for their design department is probably the best way to make a positive difference in the world while also being able to pay the bills. Plenty of companies are doing "good work" in the world. The world would be a vastly worse place without business as usual for all kinds of products. Improving some of those products can make a meaningful difference.
There is plenty of time to think about how to make a really serious difference. It doesn't have to be solved today. After you get a bit of experience, you can pivot to something that you feel fits that criteria.
I tend to not like these types of questions because a bunch of internet strangers are generally speaking not somehow magically more qualified than you are to decide how to make a "real" difference in the world. The short list of people with such answers are typically working on them in some way and it often doesn't pay the bills.
Best.
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#38I work for a company called Mark43. We make software to help police officers do their jobs more efficiently - our applications literally help save lives. There's a lot of interesting design challenges - for example, emergency dispatchers look at our CAD (computer aided dispatch) software for many hours on large monitors.. how do you design it so their eyes don't get tired? And then cops look at the same software on t…
Why do you call the position "product designer" when it is definitely asking for UX designers? I mean, when I think "product designer" I think industrial design, but this is clearly on the software side. Ah, I guess this is common confusion; from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_design : > Product design is sometimes confused with (and certainly overlaps with) industrial design, and has recently become a broad t…
A digital product designer is basically a UX designer with knowledge of product management. While UX rely only on the user experience and the constraints of the user environment, the P.D. have to incorporate (and understand) business requests, production workflow, ect.
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#39I'm guessing you have very high earning potential. It is almost certainly the case that the most impact you can have is achieved by focusing on earning as much money as possible and donating as much of it as possible to organizations optimized for making impact. But most people seem to want to optimize the feel-good hands-on impact instead of the total objective impact.
Re: Ask HN: What pressing world problems should a graphic designer work on?
#40Healthcare user experience sucks. Last century kind of sucks. Find a job at Cerner or Epic who account for more than half of all hospital information systems and help clinicians avoid tragic errors, make faster and better decisions, understand health records more clearly, capture ideas/observations/memories.
I just left a healthcare company very similar to Cerner/Epic. The healthcare user experience sucks because the parties involved want it to suck. Older doctors are highly resistant to change and will look for any opportunity to condemn your product. The nurse's unions will stop you in your tracks for taking away duties that a nurse should be doing (we had a client tell us we couldn't auto-fill date fields with today's…
>Give healthcare another 10 years for the generation to turn over.
Anything for a Win10/Modern web EMR. Good lord, all of them suck and are ancient monoliths by now.