The Dribbblisation of Design

"Design starts at the top of a company with the company mission. Then the company vision. It’s very hard to do great design in an organisation without a clear and actionable mission and vision. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. If your company lacks a clear mission, make it your job to facilitate the creation of one."

This is so true. It's way to easy to get lost in creating beautiful designs, oohing and ahhing at little neat interactions, etc. But if it's not fulfilling the initial goal of what you're trying to accomplish it's sadly a waste of time and resources. That's not to say you can't accomplish both (beautiful design that also meets the goals of the app) - but it's a lot harder than it sounds. And very easy to get derailed. Setting up some periodic checkpoints along the way to keep checking back that you're still on target can definitely help.

Interesting point.

I recently started using dribbble and thought, "I wish there was more detail in how they came to that conclusion regarding design, layout, and some information architecture". There have few who actually do, but was dribbble founded with the OP main concern in mind? I have a background in research from working in a Research Lab, IT, and project management. Now I'm starting my career in UXD and UD. From my perspective it helps to start with a wireframe, documenting a sitemap, interview the clients, hell even have a case study (this one is usually over looked), call-to-actions, purpose of the created User Experience. I've met with a couple senior UXD people in the field (who are nice as well, btw) and always say mention people always are trapped in the color schemes, wow factor, and forget that main question: "Who is your user?".

To add: I feel there's attempt for added weight toward the UXD, as he/she is the sole responsible person. People forget that it's a team effort as well.

How so? And what is "this type of criticism"? To me it looks like the design world has taken one concept and hyped and warped it, missing the point of the original goals.

I don't see this article as any different than the misuse of Hadoop article that was posted yesterday.

The article contains this gem: ...Redesigns of other people’s work is pure folly e.g. the new Yahoo logo, iOS7, changes to Facebook, the New New Twitter, the American Airlines rebrand. People have no context for the decision making process involved in these projects, no knowledge of the requirements, constraints, organisational politics.

First, most of these redesigns are done in good fun, as a thought exercise for the designer. New thinking applied to familiar context.

But secondly, it's so important to understand that all brands and interfaces are ultimately judged by your customers, who have "no knowledge of [or patience for] the requirements, constraints, organisational politics." I've just heard that argument way too often used to prop up a poor design outcome. Good design remembers that the context of your product is in the hands of your consumer, not in the conference room of your headquarters.

If someone outside your company offers some free thoughts on your brand and identity, it's not a bad idea to look them over. They are relating to you as a customer. (And usually, a huge promoter.)