We don't need you to design anymore

http://www.drawar.com/articles/we-dont-need-you-to-design-anymore/111/

by MrAlmostWrong • 16 years ago

55 22 16 years ago

shalmanese• 16 years ago

The author commits a fallacy by only listing companies that are successful and have bad design and not listing those who were unsuccessful and had bad design.

You could make similar arguments about source control, unit testing or bug tracking. Plenty of companies succeed despite not having them and they're not crucial to success but it can make or break in a large amount of marginal cases.

Despite that, the article is making an important point and having a conversation I don't see designers having very often.

ktsmith• 16 years ago

He also misses that a website is not the only aspect of most businesses. A web only company might be able to get away with a logo from 99 logos, but a brick and mortar store would likely have some problems.

My experience is that there isn't a lot of good cross over between print designers and web designers as the skill sets differ greatly. If I need a logo for my business I expect that it's going to cost me about $1k or maybe more. I will be able to use the assets for the web, print, video etc. This has been pointed out before, but I would also want my designer to take into consideration how the logo looks away from the screen. Is it legible on a business card? Would it scale up to a billboard or signage for my storefront?

The other issue with things from 99 designs is that they are often built from templates and you could run into licensing problems later. That could be an expensive mistake if you attempt to register trademarks or copyrights and submit anything with those designs in them. Overall the article is simply short sighted.

tptacek• 16 years ago

You really think so? I walk down the street in the west loop, and I do not see a lot of Pentagram-grade design in signage. Most people get by just fine with crappy design.

shrikant• 16 years ago

A web only company might be able to get away with a logo from 99 logos, but a brick and mortar store would likely have some problems.

Isn't it the other way round?

cschep• 16 years ago

Weird. This took forever to load, caused Chrome to crash, then my computer blue screened. Probably just a local problem..but did anyone else get weird loading behavior in Chrome at least?

edit: loads up in firefox 3.6 no problem. I'm on windows 7 64bit.

mikecane• 16 years ago

FWIW, I've had problems with Chrome on sites and others have reported it on Twitter too. It makes me wonder if this is something someone should follow up. Seems like there's a story here everyone is not yet seeing, I haven't had these problems until a week or so ago when I updated it, Excuse this being OT, but Chrome was mentioned here,

DenisM• 16 years ago

s/opinion/spit-test/g

latch• 16 years ago

Is web design becoming a commodity? In some cases it has been for a while, but like all professionals, a good designer will learn new skills and adapt to the changing world - like crazy jquery kung fu or iphone samurai.

dusklight• 16 years ago

The value of design increases as the number of users increase.

For Amazon, getting a 0.1% increase in revenue from changing the color of a button would be a big deal. If Amazon paid $50k just for that one color change they would still be millions of dollars ahead.

For a smaller business a 0.1% change would not be as significant.

teej• 16 years ago

I think the article misses something pretty important though - not every customer is created equal. Design on a micro scale (changing the color of a button) is a force multiplier at scale for sure. But design on a macro scale can have an effect on customer value. This is the whole idea behind luxury brands.

If you have 5x less traction than a competitor but you can monetize yours 10x better, you're in a way better position. Aesthetic design can be a huge driver in higher value users.

webwright• 16 years ago

The problem here is the definition of "design".

For Amazon, A/B testing a button color could have a huge effect.

However, being "prettier" might not do a damn thing. Heck, it might HURT them.

The author, I think, is talking about graphic design. His point would obviously fall REALLY flat if he was talking about UX design.

dagobart• 16 years ago

Is that UI (user interface) design? If not, to my knowledge, UX refers to Unices, and wikipedia does not tell anything related else.

So, what is UX?

davidedicillo2• 16 years ago

I'm going to tell you a secret: good design = good usability.

Shhhh... don't tell anyone that a gradient or a shiny button doesn't mean having a good design. A good design might be as simple as text over a white page. Good design is about getting out of the way, making the use of the website or application easier and intuitive (and of course making it look good while doing that). Design is about aesthetic and functionality, you can separate them.

frio• 16 years ago

Absolutely. When looking for a fridge rental for a flat I've just moved into, we had a quick Google - and the design on this site (http://www.rentafridge.co.nz/) won them business. Simple, straightforward and tells the user exactly what they need to know.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

I agree with you entirely right up until you say you can separate aesthetics and functionality. While you can do so arbitrarily, they're both so interdependent that neither can truly excel without a certain amount of care taken for the other. Good functionality improves the aesthetic experience of a UI, and good aesthetics improve the conveyance of functionality.

You'll find varying emphases between these two all over, but very few successful products make it with a significant disconnect between them.

davidedicillo2• 16 years ago

Actually that was a typo. I meant to say that you can't separate them :)

teilo• 16 years ago

From experience, I can tell you that all things being equal, a good design and pleasant usability experience win you business from your competition.

My company built its own online quoting and ordering platform from the ground up - Smartpress.com. There are many sites out there that let you buy printing online. Ours is clean, fast, pretty, and gives you instant quotes on all products. I'm not pimping our site, but these features of our platform have won us customers. We know because that is what they tell us. The design attracted them, and equated to conversions.

We have our own designers in house, just not web designers. So, we paid good money to a contractor whom we know very well, and worked closely with him. It was worth every penny.

PonyGumbo• 16 years ago

I appreciate the blog / opinion content on HN when it's well written, or written by a credible source. This fails on both levels.

timdorr• 16 years ago

Oh, the many counter-examples:

Github & Sourceforge

Slashdot & Digg

Facebook & MySpace

Look at Apple. When they started building their products with interesting, cool designs, they started recovering as a company. I own a Nexus One because it's a better phone, but the iPhone outsells it because it's more slick to own one.

Design does matter. Especially if you do it right. A really stellar website markets itself.

trafficlight• 16 years ago

I don't think you can compare the iPhone that's been out for over 2 years and the Nexus which has been around for 2 months. And really, the iPhone has been in the making since 2001 with the advent of the iPod. Google is starting from scratch with the Nexus.

twidlit• 16 years ago

Zappos.com has the largest footer because they sell shoes. Get it? Foot? Shoes? ....please don't downvote me.

We don't need you to design anymore

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