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Copying is the way design works (2020)

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Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#221

Post by nashashmi »

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…

For some reason, I swapped the word designer with artist. Designers are artists first in my head. They adapt off the shelf solutions second.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#222

Post by jpc0 »

Kiro wrote: post #217
jpc0 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point being made is that there is very little room for creativity there... There are tons of examples of physics engines written in multitudes of languages with a full range of quality of implemention. Now if the LLM had known to look for and found dark matter or gravitational waves all while sitting there on your computer comparing micro changes between CPU cycles, maybe you would have a point. To my kno…

I'm not talking about the physics calculations. I'm talking about it navigating, adapting and coding using my own patterns, coding style and structure within a context that is completely custom. It understands the framework I've built, what functions to use when and writes code looking and working as if it was my own.

> It understands the framework I've built, what functions to use when and writes code looking and working as if it was my own.

Yes, that's what LLMs do. They build statistical models based on their context and training data. They then give the most likely statistical output.

There's nothing creative about it, it's all statistics based on the inputs and they can at best extrapolate but they cannot fundamentally move outside of their inputs.

Humans uniquely can.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#223

Post by morbicer »

maeil wrote: post #177
ozim wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not only that. For example wannabe EDM DJs think they have to be creative and find tracks that no one ever heard to be edgy or whatever… most of people pay for having cookie cutter songs played so they can dance and have a good experience and they don’t want to be surprised on EDM event - well there are big names that can do whatever they want of course but that is different expectation. The same with software…

I'm not sure how to phrase this in a way that complies with the spirit of HN (open to suggestions!) but that's a pretty American take on electronic music. It's not necessiraly wrong, but it holds just as much for any other genre of music and the choice of "EDM" to make the point is pretty typical.

I am with you, let's get bashed as Euro-snobs.

I listen to electronic music for 25+ years, different genres and I never grokked what exactly is EDM. To me it's a vague hodgepodge of mainstream pruduction spanning anything from Guetta to Skrillex.

People around me who like electronic music refer to it as techno, house, dnb, psytrance, hardcore, what have you. There are crossovers and there are multi-genre festivals. But no one says "I am going to an EDM event tonight"

There's expectation that you will hear some classic hits but people expect to hear something new as well.

Edit: Wikipedia actually shines a light on the resurfacing of EDM "brand" in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Termino...

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#224

Post by solarmist »

gen220 wrote: post #208
pulse7 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs himself told what he saw at Xerox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7aUJyJbJMw

He's famous, so his view is the one that's most commonly regurgitated, but that doesn't make it the most correct one. Steve's point of view is one point of view, in a story that involved ~10 people. When you hear the story from each person's point of view and union them, the subtly-incorrect aspects of his perspective become pretty glaring.

Has someone done that? Sounds like a interesting read/watch.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#225

Post by britzkopf »

morbicer wrote: post #223
maeil wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how to phrase this in a way that complies with the spirit of HN (open to suggestions!) but that's a pretty American take on electronic music. It's not necessiraly wrong, but it holds just as much for any other genre of music and the choice of "EDM" to make the point is pretty typical.

I am with you, let's get bashed as Euro-snobs. I listen to electronic music for 25+ years, different genres and I never grokked what exactly is EDM. To me it's a vague hodgepodge of mainstream pruduction spanning anything from Guetta to Skrillex. People around me who like electronic music refer to it as techno, house, dnb, psytrance, hardcore, what have you. There are crossovers and there are multi-genre festivals. B…

That actually points to the problem I have with it. I don't think many jazz lovers would balk at reference to a performance as a "jazz performance" without a specification of which one of its subvariants (which by the way are far less numerous than EDM - compare here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_genres, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genre...). But in my experience, electronic music fans quite often feel compelled to endlessly nitpick over which subgenre some (almost always) 4/4, uptempo, 4 minute track belongs to.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#226

Post by xinayder »

krisoft wrote: post #161
xinayder wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it makes sense, it really isn't the case if the market leaders have shitty design principles. Apple stopped bundling an iPhone charger on recent models. Samsung did the same, but realized the backlash was enormous, and offered the charger for free (instead of being an additional purchase) if you bought a recent model. Same with headphone jack, although it was received much more negatively and I'm pretty sure Sa…

I don't think you are quite talking about the same kind of design here. You are talking about very high level choices. (Do we bundle a charger with every new phone? does the phone have a jack?) Those are not really good examples where familiarity is important. The argument about the importance of familiarity is in the UX paradigm of the phone. Think about the task of pairing a phone with a wifi network. You usually d…

I understand, I couldn't scratch my head to think of dark design patterns done by big companies nowadays when it comes to UX. One thing I can think of is how Samsung keeps moving away common settings from Android to new menus in new One UI versions. I remember when I updated to Android 14 and I just couldn't find where to configure my battery charger settings.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#227

Post by karaterobot »

guappa wrote: post #138
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…

There's a full time design team where I work. The menu items got decided before they all got hired. What they do is to move them around every few months, change the colours, design our application with a mobile layout, despite 99% of our users being on desktop computers…

Keep in mind that the design team usually doesn't just make up work items, somebody is telling them to work on some product area. That somebody could be a product manager, or somebody higher up. Presumably there's a reason for them to be working on those things, and it's related to creating some sort of value for users and the company. If not, there just won't be a design team there for long.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#228

Post by chefandy »

bluGill wrote: post #218
chefandy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird because the dozens of UI designers and also UX designers and researchers (UI design and UX Design are not the same thing) I know are employed doing exactly what they were trained to do. If you think UX was at an apex in the 90s, you haven't actually looked.

There are more today than the 90s for sure. However there are a lot more UIs around, and the big players don't give the UI and UX design people near as much control as they did then and so bad UI dominates. today's flat UI fad would not be allowed in the 90s.

Lots of developers think that. When you've got a working mental model of how software functions, generally, you interact with computers completely differently. Most people don't even think about 90% of the interfaces they use— from text messages to microwaves to ordering kiosks to car radios— specifically because UI design is light-years beyond what it was. You want to see what usability looks like without interface design? Look at FOSS... And guess how many non-developers use end-user-facing FOSS apps? What about big ones like Firefox and Blender and Signal? As in, the only ones that have any nontechnical user base? They're almost exclusively run by foundations that employee product designers and UI designers for their important features.

As much as developers like to imagine they're somehow experts on interface design because they've used so many interfaces and understand the tooling, empirical evidence points to the contrary. I worked as a developer for a decade before I moved to design, and I hate to say it, but damn near 100% of the confidently stated interface design knowledge among developers is because they haven't learned enough to get over the dunning-krueger peak, and echo chambers like this only reinforce that.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#229

Post by smrq »

guappa wrote: post #138
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…

There's a full time design team where I work. The menu items got decided before they all got hired. What they do is to move them around every few months, change the colours, design our application with a mobile layout, despite 99% of our users being on desktop computers…

>design our application with a mobile layout, despite 99% of our users being on desktop computers

And without a mobile layout before, I wonder why?

It's bonkers that not everyone is on board with responsive design being table stakes in 2024.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#230

Post by maeil »

britzkopf wrote: post #225
morbicer wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you, let's get bashed as Euro-snobs. I listen to electronic music for 25+ years, different genres and I never grokked what exactly is EDM. To me it's a vague hodgepodge of mainstream pruduction spanning anything from Guetta to Skrillex. People around me who like electronic music refer to it as techno, house, dnb, psytrance, hardcore, what have you. There are crossovers and there are multi-genre festivals. B…

That actually points to the problem I have with it. I don't think many jazz lovers would balk at reference to a performance as a "jazz performance" without a specification of which one of its subvariants (which by the way are far less numerous than EDM - compare here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_genres , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genre... ). But in my experience, electronic…

It could be that I'm just not trained enough on other genres, but I'd argue that the differences are generally bigger, and the genres being much more numerous makes perfect sense. Because "Electronic [Dance] Music" just means that electronic instruments were used more prominently than any acoustic instruments. That says extremely little about the music. Whereas Jazz means something very specific.

To name three "Electronic Music" genres, if you compare Hardstyle vs UK Dubstep vs Tropical House, I'd say the difference is much bigger between any pair than "Nu Jazz" vs "New Orleans Jazz".

You can conveniently grow an opinion on this here: https://everynoise.com/

There are genres of electronic music that are like metal (very uptempo, in-your-face, maximalist) and ones that are like jazz (smooth, free-flowing, open, not maximalist). Both being very common and huge subgenres. But where's the jazz that sounds like metal or the metal that sounds like jazz? They might exist, but would be incredibly niche.

Besides, people nitpicking over subgenres exists in many genres. Metal (or really "Music featuring heavy electric guitars") is famous for it. But in both it's only a small minority of people who spends their time doing this, mostly teens or people online, very rarely people actually visiting and enjoying shows.

"Jazz" should be compared to "Techno". And people definitely go to "Techno" festivals, even though you can further divide it into "Hard techno", "Industrial techno" and so on.

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