I think the hallmark of a good designer is knowing which things can be compromised and which things absolutely should never be. Different designers will have different opinions on what those things are.
Design is compromise
51–60 of 104 posts
Re: Design is compromise
#52Absolutely spot-on. However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise). I learned, when I was a kid, that I can't always get what I want (I think that someone even sang about it, way back then). The art of compromise, is one of the most valuable skills I had, during my career, and I'm still at it. In fact, I was j…
People seem focused on the interpersonal conflict angle in the comments here, i.e. winning and losing in a battle of wills. I think its just as important to realize ideas themselves can be conflicted or contradictory, and that practical action requires compromise. Many seductive ideas may not be well-formed if you really dig deeply enough. It's not just economic or political pragmatism. Even the solo designer/thinker…
I believe people are focusing on that because that's a traditional meaning of the word — Merriam-Webster uses "concession" in 2 out of 3 definitions. I would say that an impersonal "compromise" was more of a figure of speech that evolved into another meaning of the word.
The OP here talks about a compromise between two ideas, which means that it could be a single person making trade-offs based on their conscious choices about where the (bigger) value is.
The negative connotation is also mostly personal — it's like glass half-full or half-empty question: one can say that in a compromise, two people/ideas are going away with some of their desire/value unfulfilled, or that both are going away with some of their desire/value fulfilled.
Re: Design is compromise
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you say... You have arrived at a compromise? Ba-dum-tshh!
Ohohoho. I'd say this is actually an example of a third thing, where it turns out that you didn't even disagree, except in choice of words.
Does not your entire comment rely on a very particular ("original") definition of the word compromise — so, uhm, on "choice of words"?
Re: Design is compromise
#54>Compromise is neither good nor bad, it’s something we do every day. It’s decision making. Prioritizing. Deciding that one thing is more important than another.
It's AI slop.
Edit: as pointed to me, it says 2018. I'd be damned. Guess that makes it merely part of the "LinkedIn post" training set pushing AI towards such style!
Re: Design is compromise
#55Absolutely spot-on. However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise). I learned, when I was a kid, that I can't always get what I want (I think that someone even sang about it, way back then). The art of compromise, is one of the most valuable skills I had, during my career, and I'm still at it. In fact, I was j…
People seem focused on the interpersonal conflict angle in the comments here, i.e. winning and losing in a battle of wills. I think its just as important to realize ideas themselves can be conflicted or contradictory, and that practical action requires compromise. Many seductive ideas may not be well-formed if you really dig deeply enough. It's not just economic or political pragmatism. Even the solo designer/thinker…
Well yes, as a designer the thing people do not understand is that e.g. for a poster there is a limited bandwidth for messages you can get across. The "uncompromising" business guy may think he is uncompromising by putting all infos he really wants to push onto the poster, but in fact that just means they are deluding every single message they really wanted to push.
In reality you always have to compromise if you aim to achieve more than one thing at once. Wanna deliver a quality product and earn money? Then you will have to compromise between the quality and the revenue in some ways. Granted if you search hard you may be able to find ways (=compromises) that are more win-win on both fronts than others, this search is the task of any good designer.
But that means you have to have at least have to have a slither of understanding of the search space.
Re: Design is compromise
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't one of the ones who downvoted you (I didn't land on this thread until after all of this discussion about downvotes had happened), but I also don't really understand what you think is valuable about the idea you presented. At best, it comes across like semantics about what the correct definition for something is (which seems to come from a prescriptivist take that disagrees with the overwhelmingly common usag…
Oh, so people are annoyed at me because they aren't getting the point, maybe? The commenter who mentioned Steven Covey knew what I was talking about. It's not just semantics ... or, wait a minute, are you saying everybody secretly knows that what they call compromises ought ideally to be creative mutual preferences, and not involve either or both of the parties having to put up with things and having their goals degr…
You are obviously using a newly defined phrase "mutual preference" which does not seem to be familiar to most people and a quick search does not bring anything of value for me (there is "mutual preference method", but that's about matching people to one another).
I — among others — believe that "sweet spot", "balanced", "trade-off" and even "compromise" are good enough words to describe a solution that achieves good outcomes for multiple competing goals (not just people), and I really believe that whether any of those is negative is in the eye (ear) of the beholder.
If you are instead claiming that there are no competing goals when you are eg. building a product, you might be looking only at very simple products (though I have a hard time imagining a product so simple there are at least not two goals in tension — eg. a knife and toothpick both need to balance sharpness and safety).
Re: Design is compromise
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ohohoho. I'd say this is actually an example of a third thing, where it turns out that you didn't even disagree, except in choice of words.
Does not your entire comment rely on a very particular ("original") definition of the word compromise — so, uhm, on "choice of words"?
You're saying that a definition of compromise as "concessions on both sides" is strange and original, really? Did you understand the word compromise to mean a process to which creativity is crucial, and not concessions? I'd be very surprised (and pleased) if that was how you understood the word already. It's not how it's portrayed in the article.
Re: Design is compromise
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't one of the ones who downvoted you (I didn't land on this thread until after all of this discussion about downvotes had happened), but I also don't really understand what you think is valuable about the idea you presented. At best, it comes across like semantics about what the correct definition for something is (which seems to come from a prescriptivist take that disagrees with the overwhelmingly common usag…
Oh, so people are annoyed at me because they aren't getting the point, maybe? The commenter who mentioned Steven Covey knew what I was talking about. It's not just semantics ... or, wait a minute, are you saying everybody secretly knows that what they call compromises ought ideally to be creative mutual preferences, and not involve either or both of the parties having to put up with things and having their goals degr…
> Oh, so people are annoyed at me because they aren't getting the point, maybe? The commenter who mentioned Steven Covey knew what I was talking about
I mean, sure, if you think that there's literally no way for you to improve how you communicate to more effectively convey your ideas, then yes it's because of the other people and not something you can address. One person getting the point isn't a sign that everyone else is going to though. If your goal is to be persuasive to enough people that you don't need to risk downvotes though, you might find more success from looking closer at why you failed to get the outcome you want than from trying to justify it as not your fault. As I said though, I don't have any agenda here; I didn't downvote you, and if you're happier with the outcomes you're getting rather than being open to trying to communicate differently, it doesn't bother me! Given that you seemed upset about the downvotes though, it seemed like maybe you genuinely wanted to learn what might have caused them so you could try to avoid it in the future, so I was offering what seemed like the reason to me.
> Everybody secretly knows that what they call compromises ought ideally to be creative mutual preferences, and not involve either or both of the parties having to put up with things and having their goals degraded
Not quite, I'm saying that it's not really a secret (at least not intentionally); it's just that common definition that most people understand the word to mean includes both win/win and lose/lose. It's totally understandable that this might not be your understanding of the word, since there's no way to really find out which words you might not understand the same way everyone else does, short of looking up every single word in a recent dictionary, which isn't a particularly fun way to spend time.
Re: Design is compromise
#59Compromise is the last tool in the designer's toolbox. Before settling with a compromise, the designer should relentlessly try to narrow down what the problem being solved is, while trying out all possibilities, until it looks like there is no solution that matches exactly the problem (or they run out of time). More often than not, a compromise means that the problem wasn't scoped out well enough, and it ends up part…
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Re: Design is compromise
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, so people are annoyed at me because they aren't getting the point, maybe? The commenter who mentioned Steven Covey knew what I was talking about. It's not just semantics ... or, wait a minute, are you saying everybody secretly knows that what they call compromises ought ideally to be creative mutual preferences, and not involve either or both of the parties having to put up with things and having their goals degr…
You are obviously using a newly defined phrase "mutual preference" which does not seem to be familiar to most people and a quick search does not bring anything of value for me (there is "mutual preference method", but that's about matching people to one another). I — among others — believe that "sweet spot", "balanced", "trade-off" and even "compromise" are good enough words to describe a solution that achieves good…
But those describe a different thing. I use "mutual preference" carefully. Dale Carnegie described this in 1936. I don't remember what term he used for it, if any. But instead of any trade-off, which I will repeat is a lose-lose because both sides settle for an inferior version of their idea, you create a new idea which satisfies the spirit of what both sides wanted - quite likely satisfies it better than what they first thought of - and is quite different in nature.
This is of course difficult to do, and you may give up and compromise instead. Sometimes that's understandable. It is however worse.