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

Copying is the way design works (2020)

matthewstrom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 245 posts

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#81

Post by scoot »

indiv0 wrote: post #21

Reminds me of one of my favourite video essays -- "Everything is a Remix" [0]. The video and this article cover the same ideas albeit with different examples. Which is funny on a meta level -- the article could be called a remix of the video. The video (if I recall correctly) goes a bit further, attacking patents/IP law as anti-creative. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc

There's a fine line though. Led Zeplin didn't remix, they flat out ripped off other artists lyrics and melody. Changing the musical genre doesn't wash IMHO.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#82

Post by lupire »

zogrodea wrote: post #61
wiz21c wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I broke into his house Not fun at all. Microsoft is like Disney, they steal from others and trounce others for stealing from them. Absurd people.

I'm not doubting, but can you give a few examples of Microsoft trouncing others? I do recall Disney (a main reason copyright laws last so long, and who didn't want Steamboat Willie to enter public domain). I also think of Amazon (which the creator of the Elm programming language describes as having "the Jeff problem" because they steal smaller people's/team's ideas), although that's a different problem. I can't say a…

Did you miss one of the largest antitrust cases in history, litigated for a decade?

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#83

Post by lupire »

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.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#84

Post by llamaimperative »

iczero wrote: post #56
llamaimperative wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth would IP keep bad ideas around? You're free to make a better idea and let it compete in the market, since by being better it'd definitionally be different.

Let's say someone patents, idk, Client-Side Decoration (CSD). People like it, surely, because people use it. Unfortunately, there is drastically reduced space to innovate because nobody else can use that idea anymore. Expecting the patent holder to innovate has proven to be a bad assumption in part because IPR means they have no competition in that space anyways. The idea stays bad because nobody else can make it bet…

So people like it but it's bad? How exactly are you defining bad?

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#85

Post by kivle »

pembrook wrote: post #29

Copying isn’t just how design works, it’s how everything works. Humans are imitation machines. We create new things by collecting, regurgitating and mutating stuff we experience, just like LLMs. In a vacuum man has no ideas outside of base impulses. Hence why originality is a novice belief. The closer you get to any field, the more you realize the stories around who made all the breakthroughs are BS media narratives.…

It's very Hackernews to throw LLMs in there, but I agree. LLMs don't have experience though. They have training data, and a probabilistic output.

Designing things have two goals:

- Make old things seem new

- Make new things seem old and familiar

Both need a lot of knowledge about how humans work and how we have made sense of the world up until now. Design can't be made in a vacuum and without input.

Edit: To expand: An LLM would never have come up with touch input. It would have regurgitated the existing ideas of using a pen or a mouse to point at things on a screen. To come up with touch input was a huge feat of human engineering that was a combination of design (making touching a obvious for any human, old or young) and engineering (making that interaction actually work).

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#86

Post by hardwaresofton »

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.

I can only hope this was a joke/light hearted but anyway

> That just your own bad taste.

Please be civil

[link to hn guidelines here]

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#88

Post by lolinder »

turnsout wrote: post #43
karmakaze wrote: post #2

This is a great quote: > In the middle of Apple’s case against Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple, hoping to establish its rights as the inventor of the desktop interface. The court threw out this case, too, and questioned why Xerox took so long to raise the issue. Bill Gates later reflected on these cases: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox ... I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that [Jobs] h…

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…

Your version makes it sound like Apple gave Xerox $1M in stock in exchange for the visit. Most sources I can find don't mention the stock at all, but the one that does [0] makes it pretty clear that the offer was to let Xerox buy stock from Apple pre-IPO in exchange for the tour, which is a very different story:

> Jobs's company stood on the precipice of a public offering guaranteed to make him and any investors wealthy, and the tech guru's impending good fortune enticed the suits at Xerox to make him an offer he couldn't refuse: Let us buy shares in your company, and we'll give you a peek inside the greatest minds in your field.

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-apple-steve-jobs-xer...

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#89

Post by lolinder »

Hitton wrote: post #46
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…

Meanwhile Steve Jobs: "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

Clip: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jeZ7m0ycw

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#90

Post by lolinder »

cortesoft wrote: post #74
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?

Why would they give away 1m in stock just to look?

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.
Post reply on HN