Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Design culture is a frozen shithole

blog.colepeters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#11

Post by taeric »

"There was once a time when design was a vehicle for social change, for political disruption, for speaking up and giving a big “fuck you” to the status quo."

I'm tempted to just say "no there wasn't." There were good designs during times of social change. Feels that this is a general "rising tide lifts all boats" situation, though. Probably more accurate to say survivor bias.

That is, I find it hard to believe that the "designs" truly facilitated these changes, so much as they helped what was already moving. Think of it as the coefficient of friction for moving bodies. The designs and such are enough to overcome the kinetic values, but not static ones.

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#12

Post by compare »

Thanks for this. Design trends really are detached from any sensible reality. They're turning good designs into bad designs whenever a site tries to modernize themselves to match these trends.

Here's my rule for web app design: 90% of the page, by area, should be somehow derived from the app's dynamic content, versus static filler content from the designer, no matter how pretty the filler is.

Second rule: Designers, stop calling your OWN apps sexy or beautiful. Would you walk up to someone that you just met, and tell them that you're beautiful while they're looking directly at you? What the f## are you designers thinking?

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#13

Post by [deleted] »

sp332 wrote: post #6

Edit with actual content: The number of companies that describe in glowing terms how they're moving forward by shutting down and taking all your data with them is really way too high. I think fotopedia.com is the last one I heard of, you should check out their blog post and the comments: http://blog.fotopedia.com/fotopedia-shutdown/ Mods: why can't I make a comment linking to the ourinrediblejourney tumblr? It's rele…

[deleted]

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#14

Post by aridiculous »

This is uncomfortably scathing. And true.

The part about the Icebergs acquisition is particularly depressing. We are losing the trust of consumers by constantly shutting down products. It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market).

People always talk about this and that policy stifling innovation. This practice of shutting down products after a building a user base is just as bad. Consumers (I know I feel this way) are simply not going to trust products that aren't from the big guys. That hurts the small guys. "Early adopters" don't solve everything.

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#15

Post by hipsterelitist »

As someone with a formal design education and a uhh "technologist", I think this argument is pure crap. You're looking at "designers" in tech and making a very valid critique of the industry at large, but these designers have very little to do with it. Yes, they're pumping out derivative cloying work like every start up does because that's what they get paid to do. I think you might need to step out of the tech bubble before throwing stones at others for sitting in it.

Most of the designers I know aren't in tech (mostly so they can have autonomy and greater impact, slightly less to do with finding it wholly un-interesting and trivial) and your whole critique just doesn't seem to hold water for them.

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#16

Post by aridiculous »

taeric wrote: post #11

"There was once a time when design was a vehicle for social change, for political disruption, for speaking up and giving a big “fuck you” to the status quo." I'm tempted to just say "no there wasn't." There were good designs during times of social change. Feels that this is a general "rising tide lifts all boats" situation, though. Probably more accurate to say survivor bias. That is, I find it hard to believe that t…

I agree, but I think what he's trying to get at is that designers were more politically engaged on the whole, especially during Modernism. However, it also had its downsides, the major being design hubris (e.g. over-planned cities, complete top-down organizational thinking, treating all people interchangeably, etc).

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#17

Post by taeric »

aridiculous wrote: post #16
taeric wrote: post #11

"There was once a time when design was a vehicle for social change, for political disruption, for speaking up and giving a big “fuck you” to the status quo." I'm tempted to just say "no there wasn't." There were good designs during times of social change. Feels that this is a general "rising tide lifts all boats" situation, though. Probably more accurate to say survivor bias. That is, I find it hard to believe that t…

I agree, but I think what he's trying to get at is that designers were more politically engaged on the whole, especially during Modernism. However, it also had its downsides, the major being design hubris (e.g. over-planned cities, complete top-down organizational thinking, treating all people interchangeably, etc).

Right, and that is almost exactly survivor bias. It isn't that they were more engaged as a whole. The ones that we talk about were.

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#19

Post by aridiculous »

hipsterelitist wrote: post #15

As someone with a formal design education and a uhh "technologist", I think this argument is pure crap. You're looking at "designers" in tech and making a very valid critique of the industry at large, but these designers have very little to do with it. Yes, they're pumping out derivative cloying work like every start up does because that's what they get paid to do. I think you might need to step out of the tech bubbl…

I agree, I simply replaced "design" with "interface design" and everything makes sense.

Re: Design culture is a frozen shithole

#20

Post by smacktoward »

aridiculous wrote: post #14

This is uncomfortably scathing. And true. The part about the Icebergs acquisition is particularly depressing. We are losing the trust of consumers by constantly shutting down products. It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market). People always talk about this and that policy stifling…

> It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market)

Do they really, though? There's no shortage of acquisitions that are driven by motivations other than "these people built something useful." Such as:

"We want to hire these people whose startup is a clear failure, but they won't bite unless we give them a way to save face"

"Our VCs funded these people too, and we want to give them something resembling an exit on their terrible investment in order to keep them happy"

"Our CEO needs to demonstrate to Wall Street that he is a Dynamic Leader, which he does by buying startups more or less at random"

Post reply on HN