This is such a short-minded and troll post, surprised it didn't get deleted.
Design is Horseshit
121–130 of 148 posts
Re: Design is Horseshit
#122[deleted]
Re: Design is Horseshit
#123Holy cow what an ill-informed article. Many on this thread have illuminated it's weaknesses, here's my two cents.
To single out design from any other process involved in creating value makes zero sense. In fact in many products design, including visual design is a key differentiator that actually gives the product value (think iPod vs all other mp3 players).
Only programmers or engineers creating extemely cutting edge products that have no competitors could take this attitude than design issues can be set aside till later. What serious person would consider starting a business without incorporating design from the beginning?
Whatever meme out there about design being an edge in a startup is responding to what I see is an incorrect undervaluing of design in the tech community.
Another subtext in the discussion is many tech start ups are making software, web based or otherwise. On a typical program huge amounts of value are delivered as pixels. The user interface is also pixels. A lot of software are tools. Graphic design is mandatory for the thing to exist! Widgets are make or break whether a software tool even works at all.
I use audio software in my job (all day) and many competing applications in this space are at feature parity. UI and Ux is what separate apps that work really well from apps that are painfully slow and frustrating to use. Just consider how color is used in a complex app. It communicates feedback, breaks up function grouping, it helps you find and remember features, it provides a hopefully not unpleasant visual experience since one is staring at for extended periods. I think we are in the Dark Ages of human computer interaction and that bad visual design is a huge contributor to the problem.
BTW, anyone have examples of web services with great design don't offer value?
Re: Design is Horseshit
#124It's an interesting rant - and quite amusing, but it sounds like the author is debating against aesthetically pleasing visual design, rather than design in general.
Graphic design is visual engineering.
Sometimes the value proposition put forward by a company is 'a way to [do x] better'; if better is equivalent to 'more efficiently', 'more cheaply' or 'more easily' - chances are design is going to be factor that allows the change to happen.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#125This stuff was bizarre to me: > Design enhances value, it does not create it. Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. > It is to a massive degree much, much easier to spend a week pushing pixels to create something beautiful > If there’s one thing you can rely on everyone having an opinion on, it’s how something should look . (my emphasis) The author's conniption would appear to be around graphic design. Gra…
"""This stuff was bizarre to me: > Design enhances value, it does not create it. Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. > It is to a massive degree much, much easier to spend a week pushing pixels to create something beautiful > If there’s one thing you can rely on everyone having an opinion on, it’s how something should look.""" """ Really? Because it seems damn logical to me. """The author's conniption wo…
> Customers don't care how "well designed" (graphically AND in "how it works") a service is, if that service does nothing useful for them.
This is a good point; the value proposition is independent of design. And in fact if the value proposition is strong enough than people will fight through terrible design as long as it minimally works. However for most products the value is either middling or else obscured by novelty (often the case with new tech), and this is where bad design can sink a viable product by frustrating too many people, or great design can flip the viral coefficient to positive growth by increasing conversions of casual visitors.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
(shrug) Words mean things. If I cry out, at the top of my lungs, that "Pizza is fucking bullshit!", then go on to say that I hate how pizza kills people, tears countries apart, and delivers atrocities, people will narrow their eyes and say "Actually, I think you're thinking of war." And then they're going to be a little weirded out that I said something so simultaneously bizarre and incorrect just to get their attent…
I don't this is a good analogy except if you cry out about pizza in a place where people are used to using 'pizza' as slang for 'war'. That's the situation here, isn't it? People in the "startup community" already use the word 'design' in the narrow sense of 'graphic design'.
Well, they shouldn't. I expect far more from someone calling themselves a "designer" than their ability to draw a nice button or pick decent fonts. I expect them to be thinking about interaction, flow, "how it works", and so on.* If not, then they're qualified not as a "graphic designer", but as a "bad designer". If someone only wants to draw, they can call themselves a "graphic designer" and I'll call them when I just need a graphic (i.e. never, since I don't work in print).
* I expect the same from anyone who has anything to do with a UI/UX.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#127[Edit: I wrote this while thinking that we're debating "design" without a common defintion. I've made an attempt to express two different sides of "design".]
Those who aren't building the product often can't express ideas about what they don't see or know about. To them, the design is the surface, the user interface. So naturally they assume that if they want to create a product with "good" design, they should hire someone who does the visual part, and make their product look just like other products that they think are well designed.
If you want a good counter-example, about good design that is very subtle and runs very deep, read "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance" by Henry Petroski.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#128It's not what design looks like, rather it's how you use it that helps to determine value. Otherwise it's a work of art.
Design with utility has inherent value that can be quantified. It's silly to categorically say design is horseshit.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#129This stuff was bizarre to me: > Design enhances value, it does not create it. Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. > It is to a massive degree much, much easier to spend a week pushing pixels to create something beautiful > If there’s one thing you can rely on everyone having an opinion on, it’s how something should look . (my emphasis) The author's conniption would appear to be around graphic design. Gra…
> We're past the point where you can build technology that fits requirements and stop there. Everyone else has done that already.
You are too quick to close this big door here. You could do them relatively "ugly" and "difficult to use" if you'd do a driverless cars, a plane with real beds, a self-backuped unlimited size hard-drive for music and movies, a viable water desalinisator, a cheap enough 3D printer, a bodyless computer monitor, or even a working dating site.
Not that I disagree with the rest, but let's not say everything is done already and just needs to be done better.
Re: Design is Horseshit
#130Some Startups with bad Design have managed to do very well (Craigslist, Ebay etc), but doesn't mean all the startups with bad design will do well.
Good Design is necessary, it is what makes you subconsciously love something and use it more often.