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Copying is the way design works (2020)

matthewstrom.com

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Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#101

Post by moomoo11 »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #69
robertlagrant wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. "Intuitive" mostly means "I have seen this elsewhere."

As a concrete example, the idea of a mouse was once counterintuitive to users because they'd never seen one before. Windows included Solitaire with the OS in part to introduce ideas like "click" or "click and drag" to users that were unfamiliar with GUIs, by linking them to physical concepts users did understand ("oh, I have a physical card, I can grab it and move it around, that makes sense!").

Wow that’s cool. I remember my dad was addicted to solitaire lol

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#103

Post by kragen »

iczero wrote: post #47
turnsout wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a frustrating misunderstanding of the history, and the history is fascinating. Xerox invited Apple to tour PARC in exchange for $1M worth of pre-IPO Apple stock, which today would be worth [checks notes] more than that. There was no theft. Apple engineers got to see the Alto, not the Star (the screenshot in the article is wrong, the chronology is wrong). The visit was so fast that Apple engineers thought…

> There was no theft. I didn't know that touring somewhere meant you could copy all their designs. Was that explicitly stated?

in general you can copy all of someone's designs even without touring. exceptions are when they're covered by copyright or patent

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#104

Post by lolinder »

tptacek wrote: post #100
lolinder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP misrepresented what happened (intentionally or otherwise). They didn't give away $1M in stock, they granted Xerox the right to buy $1M in stock.

Same difference. At some point you're just arguing about what the number was. I don't care about the broader argument, but the right to buy $1MM of private shares is, in fact, real consideration.

Is it real consideration that anyone could consider to be worth "all the IP that you happen to be able to see while on this tour", or is it real consideration that Xerox thought was worth "an opportunity to see how we run the best tech lab of our generation"?

Don't forget that Apple presumably got paid $1M dollars out of the deal in addition to the tour. I'm having a hard time seeing the argument that the right to pay Apple for some of their shares in 1979 was perceived as being worth any of Xerox PARC's IP, much less "as much as you can carry in your head".

(None of which is to say that Apple was wrong to copy what they could, morally or legally. I just find the argument that these shares are evidence that it was an above-board trade that Xerox was on board with to be very weird.)

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#105

Post by tptacek »

lolinder wrote: post #104
tptacek wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same difference. At some point you're just arguing about what the number was. I don't care about the broader argument, but the right to buy $1MM of private shares is, in fact, real consideration.

Is it real consideration that anyone could consider to be worth "all the IP that you happen to be able to see while on this tour", or is it real consideration that Xerox thought was worth "an opportunity to see how we run the best tech lab of our generation"? Don't forget that Apple presumably got paid $1M dollars out of the deal in addition to the tour. I'm having a hard time seeing the argument that the right to pa…

I don't care; as far as I'm concerned, that argument is isomorphic to "would $1MM literal dollars be enough for what they saw, or should the number be higher". Maybe. But the right to buy shares is not really a meaningful distinction to the simple issuance of shares in this historical context. That's all I'm arguing.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#106

Post by DigiEggz »

burningChrome wrote: post #33
karaterobot wrote: post #18

> As a designer, I feel the need to be original. If you’re a designer, or even if you’re just interested in design, you probably feel the need to be original, too. I've been a professional designer since 2006, and I got over that thinking pretty quickly. A designer trying to be strikingly original is rarely acting in service of the design. If you want to be strikingly original, you probably want to be an artist inste…

This. I was a UI/UX guy for about 5 years and worked for a company that pumped out thousands of sites a year. A bunch of their designs won awards and I saw their model and thought I could do that, it seemed easy. The hitch was that I was going to design really cool sites, with all kinds of animations, huge text, have really cool navigation menus, etc. In short, I had a very romantic idea that I would dictate some inc…

Do you have any examples of some "cool" sites that you designed, even prototypes? You piqued my interest.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#107

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

lupire wrote: post #80
chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tom Ford commented on the issue of counterfeit and "knock off" products in the fashion industry, he said after some research (I assume by him/his company) they found that the people buying the cheap counterfeit products weren't their customers anyway, and so they weren't losing anything.

That's not the problem in fashion. The problem is if their non-customers tarnish the brand and drive customers away.

What industry do you think Tom Ford was talking about?

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#108

Post by xiaoape »

Reminded me a short article: https://signalvnoise.com/archives/000324

> We’re not designers, or programmers, or information architects, or copywriters, or customer experience consultants, or whatever else people want to call themselves these days… Bottom line: We’re risk managers.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#109

Post by jjcm »

lupire wrote: post #83
jjcm wrote: post #60

One of the mistakes I made as a young designer was pushing back against trends and fads. My opinion at the time was that trends that weren't thought out from a position of UX principles were an anti-pattern to follow. As I matured more as a designer, I now think nearly the opposite - not following trends is an anti-pattern, since that's what your users will be used to. Pull down to refresh is a great example of this.…

That just your own bad taste. Pull to refresh is useful and optional . Flat buttons save precious space on tiny mobile devices.

> Flat buttons save precious space on tiny mobile devices.

You're probably mistaking a flat button for a link / undecorated button. Apple's HIG refers to these as plain buttons for iOS[1]. I'm referring to flat vs bevelled[2], which take up the same space.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

[2] https://image.non.io/428397dc-93ae-4158-8b71-323bd11182a0.we...

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#110

Post by immibis »

kragen wrote: post #103
iczero wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no theft. I didn't know that touring somewhere meant you could copy all their designs. Was that explicitly stated?

in general you can copy all of someone's designs even without touring. exceptions are when they're covered by copyright or patent

Which they are by default.
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