Design is losing its seat at the table
mokriya.quora.com
Design is losing its seat at the table
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Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#2Design is not how something looks. It's not pastel colors, and slick animations and cutesy UI. Design is intrinsically tied to function. Design is how you think about and solve a problem.
I go back to Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design often. [0] I've highlighted a few key ones here:
Good Design Makes a Product Useful : A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product while disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
Good Design Makes A Product Understandable : It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.
The post mentions this: 'For those of us who believe in the power of design thinking to solve human problems, and to a lesser extent in the power of markets to reward solutions when the interests of consumers and businesses are correctly aligned, this was invigorating news. "
What problems are Carousel, Paper, or Jelly solving? He mentions theses question but I think he conflates pretty UI with good design when choosing these products as examples. Maybe that's a failure of the community who heralded these three as "design led apps"... but for me, these are not "well designed apps", they're pretty apps. How about Inbox, Dropbox (prime?), Periscope, Slack, IFTTT, the plethora of calendar replacements like Fantastical or Sunrise? There are so many apps that are functional as well as beautiful, why choose three objective failures?
I think design is just as important today as it has been for the past few years. We just need to be more sensitive to what counts as good design and not be distracted by rounded rectangles, lightboxes, and animations.
[0] http://www.archdaily.com/198583/dieter-rams-10-principles-of...
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#3"""
Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
"""
— Steve Jobs
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#4When your product is a solution without a real problem (which all the listed companies are, IMO), no amount of "design" will get you there. There isn't enough problem surface area to eliminate, which is where the value gets created.
Design is still killing it in a lot of places. Slack and snapchat come to mind. People want to do those things really badly, and the entire value-add of their services can be described as "get the software out of the way". That's design.
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#5Design is not how something looks. It's not pastel colors, and slick animations and cutesy UI. Design is intrinsically tied to function. Design is how you think about and solve a problem. I go back to Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design often. [0] I've highlighted a few key ones here: Good Design Makes a Product Useful : A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but…
Maybe that's a failure of the community who heralded these three as "design led apps"... but for me, these are not "well designed apps", they're pretty apps.
That's exactly the point he's making. He chose these apps because they are high-profile products made by people who are ostensibly industry leaders in design, yet they are not well-designed. He's saying those apps don't solve any problems, they are mostly just "pretty," and he believes that is indicative of a worrying trend in the designer community.
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#6Design is not how something looks. It's not pastel colors, and slick animations and cutesy UI. Design is intrinsically tied to function. Design is how you think about and solve a problem. I go back to Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design often. [0] I've highlighted a few key ones here: Good Design Makes a Product Useful : A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but…
> Design is intrinsically tied to function.
Like how this designer chose to post on Quora, where the fixed-width header means when I hit page-down on my keyboard, I miss the first two lines of text on the next page?
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#7The original title 'Designer Duds: Losing Our Seat at the Table' was more insightful and less clickbaity.
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#8Design is not how something looks. It's not pastel colors, and slick animations and cutesy UI. Design is intrinsically tied to function. Design is how you think about and solve a problem. I go back to Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design often. [0] I've highlighted a few key ones here: Good Design Makes a Product Useful : A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but…
Maybe that's a failure of the community who heralded these three as "design led apps"... but for me, these are not "well designed apps", they're pretty apps. That's exactly the point he's making. He chose these apps because they are high-profile products made by people who are ostensibly industry leaders in design, yet they are not well-designed. He's saying those apps don't solve any problems, they are mostly just "…
Right, but my point is that who designated these as "design leaders"? One good app in the past? Is a bad app sufficient to strip them of the title?
What makes Medium or Path design led? Can I just state that my app is design led?
>> "It’s now 2014, and I doubt seriously whether I’m alone in feeling a sense of anxiety about how “design” is using its seat at the table."
Why? Look at all the other amazing work that others are doing. Slack is a great call out by RickS. Design has never been more relevant. I'm more optimistic about the role of design today than ever before.
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#9Interesting note is how pedantic the author is about the marketing speak of the companies he's analyzing. I find this situation all too common in early stage products -- the copy associated with the product should be very concrete and not abstract. In later stages when your users do the "concrete talking" for you, then you can start using abstract.
Re: Design is losing its seat at the table
#10Design is not how something looks. It's not pastel colors, and slick animations and cutesy UI. Design is intrinsically tied to function. Design is how you think about and solve a problem. I go back to Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design often. [0] I've highlighted a few key ones here: Good Design Makes a Product Useful : A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but…
> Design is not how something looks
You're right. But it certainly includes how it looks.
You can't silo off certain aspects of interaction between products and users. The visual aesthetics of a product are subjectively at the front of the line when it comes to design.
Design is a "why not both" profession. You can't have a pretty looking site that doesn't function properly and still have a great product. You also can't have a functioning site that looks like shit and still have a great product. You need all aspects of design; visual, experience, functionality, etc. to come together at the same time to deliver a great product to the end user.