The Dribbblisation of Design

http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/

by pbiggar • 13 years ago

276 100 13 years ago

joelle• 13 years ago

"Design starts at the top of a company with the company mission. Then the company vision. It’s very hard to do great design in an organisation without a clear and actionable mission and vision. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. If your company lacks a clear mission, make it your job to facilitate the creation of one."

This is so true. It's way to easy to get lost in creating beautiful designs, oohing and ahhing at little neat interactions, etc. But if it's not fulfilling the initial goal of what you're trying to accomplish it's sadly a waste of time and resources. That's not to say you can't accomplish both (beautiful design that also meets the goals of the app) - but it's a lot harder than it sounds. And very easy to get derailed. Setting up some periodic checkpoints along the way to keep checking back that you're still on target can definitely help.

coldcode• 13 years ago

When I read this type of criticism, I always get the impression that everyone thinks they are better at what they do than everyone else.

klimhn3• 13 years ago

I felt the same way. Possibly he wants that all UXD, UD to all have the same background, but with a different focus?

Maybe he wants someone who is versed in UI and UXD?

nemothekid• 13 years ago

How so? And what is "this type of criticism"? To me it looks like the design world has taken one concept and hyped and warped it, missing the point of the original goals.

I don't see this article as any different than the misuse of Hadoop article that was posted yesterday.

nilliams• 13 years ago

> And what is "this type of criticism"?

Perhaps gross generalisation is a fitting term? Basically it's somewhat insulting to insinuate that designers on Dribbble believe glamour shots are the be-all and end-all of design. I've heard several prominent Dribbblers interviewed on various web design podcasts, they know what it is and what it isn't.

> To me it looks like the design world...

Whoah there, you can judge the collective opinion of 'the design world' from your desk?! :)

wuliwong2• 13 years ago

What is "the design world"? Some people made a website (dribbble.com) and some people use it. There is no monolithic "design world".

djillionsmix• 13 years ago

congratulations you are now the 1,000,000,000th internet customer to be linked to the dunning-kruger effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

you're a little bit off: everyone thinks they are shit at what they do, but great at what anybody else does

klimhn3• 13 years ago

Interesting point.

I recently started using dribbble and thought, "I wish there was more detail in how they came to that conclusion regarding design, layout, and some information architecture". There have few who actually do, but was dribbble founded with the OP main concern in mind? I have a background in research from working in a Research Lab, IT, and project management. Now I'm starting my career in UXD and UD. From my perspective it helps to start with a wireframe, documenting a sitemap, interview the clients, hell even have a case study (this one is usually over looked), call-to-actions, purpose of the created User Experience. I've met with a couple senior UXD people in the field (who are nice as well, btw) and always say mention people always are trapped in the color schemes, wow factor, and forget that main question: "Who is your user?".

klimhn3• 13 years ago

To add: I feel there's attempt for added weight toward the UXD, as he/she is the sole responsible person. People forget that it's a team effort as well.

abbazabba• 13 years ago

I'm in the same boat (background in data/finance trying to eek into UX or prod mgmt). I've noticed it all just boils down to definition.

"Design" seems to be evolving from pure aesthetics (what's the first emotion evoked upon sight) to aesthetics+function (what's the first reaction, and how does this affect my audience). Maybe it's because 10 years ago "designer" was purely synonymous with fashion or pure photoshop/illustrator. Now it seems to represent anyone and everyone from graphics/visuals, to interaction and information, and even just product.

It makes me wonder though, if there were a dribbble of site flows, wireframes, and creative call-to-actions, would people flock to it?

keithpeter• 13 years ago

http://creativebeatle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/elements_o...

Referenced in the notes. Very useful.

didgeoridoo• 13 years ago

If you want designers to stop designing for Dribbble, stop hiring designers on the basis of their Dribbble profiles.

Right now, the evaluation and hiring process for designers in most companies is so shallow that cranking out eye-catching niblets is a HIGHLY rational move for designers looking to promote themselves.

cschmidt4• 13 years ago

I hired my logo designer off of Dribbble, with excellent results. It probably is less of a problem for logo design, than for something like UX or UI.

dreamfactory9• 13 years ago

Out of interest, how do you measure excellent results?

baddox• 13 years ago

I doubt it takes each startup very long to figure out that they shouldn't hire based on Dribbble profiles.

johnjlocke• 13 years ago

In a sentence, that is the real problem.

toddmorey• 13 years ago

The article contains this gem: ...Redesigns of other people’s work is pure folly e.g. the new Yahoo logo, iOS7, changes to Facebook, the New New Twitter, the American Airlines rebrand. People have no context for the decision making process involved in these projects, no knowledge of the requirements, constraints, organisational politics.

First, most of these redesigns are done in good fun, as a thought exercise for the designer. New thinking applied to familiar context.

But secondly, it's so important to understand that all brands and interfaces are ultimately judged by your customers, who have "no knowledge of [or patience for] the requirements, constraints, organisational politics." I've just heard that argument way too often used to prop up a poor design outcome. Good design remembers that the context of your product is in the hands of your consumer, not in the conference room of your headquarters.

If someone outside your company offers some free thoughts on your brand and identity, it's not a bad idea to look them over. They are relating to you as a customer. (And usually, a huge promoter.)

smacktoward• 13 years ago

The problem with design isn't the designers. It's the clients.

Designers can only aim to produce work that challenges "constraints, organisational politics" if the client will allow them to. Very few will. You can explain until you're blue in the face that they're shooting themselves in the foot, but in any organization the easiest and safest thing to do career-wise is to avoid rocking the boat, so very few clients are willing to push back on all the different internal pressures that hobble their projects. It's easier to just accept them and deliver the best thing their internal dysfunctions will allow.

(This is as true for consulting coders as it is for consulting designers, btw. Even the original consultant, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, could never get the London police to take his word for things.)

And it's easier for designers to go along with that too than it is to refuse to work for clients who insist on shooting themselves in the foot. But it's hard to blame them. Designers gotta eat too, you know? I mean, you can play Howard Roark and refuse to work on anything that's in any way compromised, but since reality isn't a bad novel you may find yourself going your whole life without ever finding a client who meets your standards. And is a brilliant designer who never got around to designing anything really better in the final analysis than a brilliant designer who designed a bunch of nearly-great-but-sadly-compromised things? I dunno.

dreamfactory9• 13 years ago

I thought this is why we all embrace A/B testing - to eliminate internal forces and to put the user outcome first.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

I upvoted you but I disagree. When designers do unsolicited "spec" redesigns of big brands, I don't think they are representing the customer.

You can't represent the customer without doing some real research with real customers. I can't remember ever seeing those sorts of results in a spec redesign post.

Instead, I think they are using the brand as a canvas to show off their own abilities. And they always pick a big popular brand, because then they can leverage that popularity to promote their work.

colmvp4• 13 years ago

Well it's not just to promote their work, it's because that specific brand could use an update.

jamesdelaneyie• 13 years ago

Andrew Kim has a great unsolicited redesign of the American Ballot system that considered users primarily and doesn't lean too heavy on using the brand as a canvas. http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america-elect

Teensy bit bland for my tastes but it goes to show there are designer out there who do some quality redesigns.

programminggeek• 13 years ago

I think a company having a design language and identity is a powerful and wonderful thing. It makes decisions easier, it makes things so much more clear and improves what you do a lot.

At a higher level, having a vision, a framework, a filter by which you make choices and solve problems makes the whole process of doing these things easier.

AdamFernandez2• 13 years ago

The web is with us all the time. It’s already moving into our cars, into our clothes, into the things we own, into monitoring our health.

Is he using the word 'web' instead of 'Internet'? Does anyone know of the web moving into our clothes?

ulisesrmzroche• 13 years ago

It's a very, very common synonym, short for world-wide web.

AdamFernandez2• 13 years ago

I'm aware. They shouldn't be used interchangeably.

Pxtl• 13 years ago

Honestly, since everything is tunneled through HTTP and sent using javascriptish storage notation and half the content is html anyhow, I think it's fair to say "the web" now. It's not the 90s anymore... Web technologies have take over the rest of the internet.

adamauckland• 13 years ago

No. The term 'web' encompasses the protocols and standards. Generally HTTP, HTML, JavaScript, XML, JSON etc.

I have web-enabled weighing scales, web enabled radio, web enabled security cameras. If they were to use a different protocol (e.g. FTP) it would not be 'web'.

einai2• 13 years ago

I'm a designer on Dribbble. The work I present on Dribbble and the "actual" work I do for my clients are quite different most of the time. You can think of Dribbble as the "runway" of graphic/UI design - most of the stuff there are for showing off the designers' ability and/or are conceptual. They are fun and beautiful to look at, but not always designed for practical use, just like most people won't wear runway fashion everyday.

wuliwong2• 13 years ago

This is exactly how I see it. I just don't see how there's anything wrong with making fun designs, trying new things, hearing people's comments, etc. I am amazed that anybody felt this article was interesting enough to repost. I'm not a designer, but I do a lot of solo projects where I'm responsible for the back and front ends. I enjoy looking around on dribble for ideas and inspiration.

bigiain5• 13 years ago

I dunno – I upvoted it pretty much based on this fragment:

" … but work that doesn’t address real business goals, solve real problems people have every day, or take a full business ecosystem into consideration. "

That's a conversation I have almost every day with clients, designers, co-workers, and friends.

"Pixel pushing" visual design is something that some people are very highly skilled at – and the difference between good visual design and bad visual design is obvious even to those of us without the skills to create "good design", _BUT_, in terms of a product or web project it's the last ~20% of the time/money budget. Unless you've got (in the article's terms) the "Mission" and "Vision" properly articulated, and then the "Outcome", "Structure", and "Interaction" properly thought through, you don't really have enough actionable data or goals to appropriately brief a visual designer.

(Having said that, for some businesses and budgets, choosing "existing artwork" and jamming your businesses specific requirements into it might be the right way to go - the same way as most retail stores don't build spaces like Apple Stores, but make compromises based on what's available for rent in the area they want to trade, then "making do" with the space/architecture they end up with. I've helped many clients build inexpensive websites by articulating the solutions to the business problems, then cutting costs by choosing something off somewhere like ThemeForest that's "close enough" and either living with the deficiencys or bodging/hacking over them like a quick paintjob instead of a major shop refitout…)

bigiain5• 13 years ago

So it sounds to me like you agree with him – your Dribbble content is closer to "digital art" than "examples of your typical design work".

I wonder if there'd be an opportunity for a Dribbble-like site to showcase your "business goal articulation" or "optimised interaction flow"? I'm guessing not – partly because I don't think nearly as many people do that work for "fun" (in the way that many people _do_ create polished final renderings as an art/pastime), but mostly because I suspect there's significantly more business value in them – I'd expect to see that sort of higher-level business-strategic work showcased as whitepapers on a Digital Agency's website (or locked away behind NDAs or contractual/provacy agreements with the clients).

colmvp4• 13 years ago

I mean... behance allows you to present your work in a way that's similar to a case study so people often do writeups and show sketches of their process.

plaguuuuuu2• 13 years ago

How often do you find yourself at work thinking "man, I really wish I could do more of this dry business work! I hate doing creative stuff!"

einai2• 13 years ago

My Dribbble content still reflects my design style to a certain degree - with things like icons, logos and illustration, it's a bit easier. However, with a 400x300 (yes, I'm aware that there are @2x pixel and file attachment but when people browse, they only see the small cropped thumbnails) pixel restriction, it's not always easy to fit a meaningful UI design there and still keeping the thumbnail attractive (so you can get more clicks - this isn't just for an ego boost, we need to market ourselves too).

When a potential client contacts me on Dribbble, I usually send them samples of my "real" work so they can get a better idea of what they will be getting from me.

I used Forrst for a while, and some people posted design processes there. However, people are naturally drawn to eye candies more. Like others have mentioned, Behance is another option.

goldvine• 13 years ago

Great comparison to the runway - love that!

jessaustin• 13 years ago

This piece seems to me to inject just the right amount of formalism into this process. That is, I've seen other efforts in this direction build prodigious piles of abstraction, rules, and theory around this mission/vision device and around the equivalents of these four-layer and "jobs" models. Whereas, I can imagine any small group of decision-makers responding productively to this material.

zzzsh• 13 years ago

The problem is ego, Designers have a too much of it.

lcnmrn2• 13 years ago

Dribbble is to design what GitHub is to coding. Case closed.

justinph• 13 years ago

If so, dribbble is like letting you post only the first 5 lines of a README.md without commit history. Not quite the same.

lcnmrn2• 13 years ago

In design world, if you need more than 5 lines, you're doing it wrong.

jakebellacera• 13 years ago

While the author gives some great tips about product design, I don't think it's fair to say that Dribbble is belittling product design. You don't really get the full picture with each shot. You don't know what the designer's agenda is with that particular image, whether it's for fun or is going to be implemented in an actual product. I doubt that all designers on Dribbble go in head-first by only caring about the visuals. I can see where the author tried to go with this article, but I don't think that you can really place a single label on an entire community.

rriepe• 13 years ago

As someone who went through a job hunt without a "Dribbblized" portfolio a couple years ago: Go with the Dribbble approach. At least if you're looking for anything resembling a design job.

That final layer of polish and execution is what gets you hired. If you don't have that, you get eliminated immediately. Nobody will ask about your process or your wireframes if your resume gets tossed in the trash bin. You'll never have a conversation about the organizational mission and how it relates to the product if you never get called back for an interview.

If you go in with Paul's first three steps (like I did) and you're lucky enough to talk to someone who doesn't eliminate based on that all-important fourth step of visual design, you'll find yourself in disagreement. There's 8,000 ways to build a product, and chances are your method simply won't line up with theirs.

Meanwhile, there's also 8,000 ways to make something look good, but all of those ways end up beautiful. It's hard to argue about solid visual design, even if it doesn't fit your particular style or tastes.

You can get away with subpar visual design skills at your own startup, like I did, but don't ever expect to get hired without developing those skills. They're more important than the other three combined.

micheljansen• 13 years ago

Well, I guess that depends on what sort of job you are applying for. If you want to focus on how it works, apply for UX/IxD positions and bring a portfolio that demonstrates you can think in those terms. If you're more interested in working on the visual aspects of design, e.g. how it looks, you need to demonstrate polish. I got hired just fine without a single pixel-perfect design in my portfolio. Personally, I wouldn't want to work for someone who only cares about what it looks like anyway.

Aloisius2• 13 years ago

As someone who has hired designers over the years for various startups, I agree.

The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design. They are not the same thing and often aren't done by the same person.

I've had fantastic UX designers who, frankly, can't get perfectly laid out pixel perfect work done or do eye candy. I've had UI/graphic designers who were awful at figuring out flow.

I've had people who are great at both. But one thing is certain, I want my products to be intuitive AND sexy because there is a certain subset of the market that will try your product just because it looks professionally designed and is on trend. There is a high overlap of those people with taste makers and I need those people using my product.

dreamfactory9• 13 years ago

Even graphic design isn't about eye candy but about function - graphic design is at base macrotypography. What we seem to have in web design is a deeply ingrained culture of amateurism - can you imagine if we had designers adding gradients, page-curls, and drop-shadows on airport signage? The thing that scares me is that in future we might as the definition and function of a professional designer is completely eroded.

brianfryer2• 13 years ago

The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design

I can see that.

What I got from the author is that "sexy" should be emergent and not fundamental.

rhizome• 13 years ago

Isn't "pixel-perfect" for online design an anti-pattern yet?

TheZenPsycho4• 13 years ago

The author isn't conflating. That is what the words mean, and "UX" is the made up wank word. It's the "Web 2.0." of the design world.

I'm pretty sure "UX" was created as a term in response to the market getting flooded with stylists (interested amateurs) calling themselves "designers". I'm interested to see what you believe to be the distinction between "visual design" and "graphic design". Traditionally, Graphic design is about how it works, with how it looks (what you call "eye candy") being secondary to (but still a part of) function. This is the sort of thing you can learn if you read books instead of just reading blog posts.

And clearly, the definition of "graphic design" has been watered down to the point of irrelevance, and replaced with "UX". sure, fine call yourself whatever you want. But what makes you think UX won't get similarly watered down? The problem isn't the word itself, it's that the culture as a whole doesn't value design, including "designers". (in your language, the culture doesn't value "UX")

Of course language is designed* by its users, and for the moment, it seems that we have indeed fully rotated our hierarchy words a notch down over the past 20 years. But please let us not be ignorant of history, and tradition, and what "graphic design" actually is (Or at least.. .used to be) and that the whole totem pole of design and designers is sliding on a downward trajectory. (I blame adobe for making it look easy. you could always look more convincingly like a skilled professional while operating a huge desk sized typesetting machine and laying out magazines by hand with paper, exacto blades, and photographic color separations)

But sure, maybe inventing new wank words will prop up our careers for 5 more years. It's good marketing. it's good design, to invent words, to sell ourselves. Inventing a new word for "design" is a very designery thing to do. You can make design seem interesting and exciting again by giving it a new flashy buzzword. That will only take you so far though, until the novelty wears off, and suddenly you find everyone believes "UX" means "interested amateur who can make eye candy in photoshop" again.

* see what I did there? "Design" being used to denote the decisions involved in how something works and is experienced, with no reference to how anything looks. Imagine that.

dreamfactory9• 13 years ago

Bit depressing that even people in the design world don't understand the basic difference between design and styling -and think it's just some aesthetic thing rather than how we make planes that don't fall out of the sky and road signs that stop people getting themselves lost. OTOH it would seem to indicate a big opportunity (I guess Steve Jobs exploited this).

joe_the_user• 13 years ago

Sure but it seems both you and he can both be right in a sense. A designer needs Dribblized portfolio and Dribblization is making things shallow and hard to use.

The present ultra-competitive world optimizes some things but neglects others.

Diamons• 13 years ago

I also agree. It's like a developer obsessing about good code and best practices.

Sure the developer cares but the client does not care whatsoever.

Similarly the designer cares about sticking to product design and making the problem easier. However the manager wants something that looks pretty, something that looks expensive and nice to use.

EDIT: I would also like to add I agree with this sentiment. We want pretty apps. I think the time for functional apps was when the iOS and Android markets first came out and touching things on your screen to do something was foreign. Now just like iOS7, it's time to take the steering wheels off.

This is akin to the web during the '90s and early 2000 era.

denisnazarov• 13 years ago

What are some resources/guides to design in a Dribbble style? There is obviously a consistent aesthetic (effects, shadows, etc.)

pearjuice• 13 years ago

If there is anything I hate more than the technique described in the OP, it are websites which don't center content.

williamldennis• 13 years ago

The author seems to incorrectly conflate UX and visual design.

Dribbble is purely for showcasing visual design (aka technical implementation). It's the price of admission for being a designer. Dribbble isn't for, nor should it be for, explaining UX decisions.

User experience design and interaction design are different skill sets within the design discipline.

If you are impressed with someone's dribbble, then arrange for a phone interview or an in-person white boarding session.

Design is problem solving just like engineering, just a different type of problem set. Treat it as such.

true_religion• 13 years ago

I always thought the point of Dribble was to have someplace to show off your greenfield pie-in-the-sky work to other designers, not to impress clients with how well you can work with their organization.

spader725• 13 years ago

I agree with this article, but who is to say the goal of Dribbble isn't to just showcase visual design? To join Dribbble, you must get an invite from a Dribbble user. Dribbble users invite people who have similar taste and design state-of-mind as they do. So in the end you get a gated community of designers who think and work alike.

The problem with this I see is that non-design people who wants to hire designers think that Dribbble is the "go to" standard of design, without thinking of usability problems their product[s] have that needs solving.

dmyler• 13 years ago

You nailed it. Dribbble excels at featuring and sharing solutions to visual design challenges. Icons. Logos. UI components that show effective affordance (as best you can tell from a small screenshot).

I think Dribbble is somewhat a victim of success; everyone wants in and uses it as they see fit.

vxNsr2• 13 years ago

I've actually been having trouble recommending people upgrade to (or purchase new) iOS7 (devices) for this exact reason, even I sometimes don't understand how to use it anymore, so I can't tell my Luddite F&F to use something that costs more and has become as hard to use, as say android.

I can only hope that Apple will learn the error of their ways and turn back to function over form.

brianfryer2• 13 years ago

As a designer, I totally, totally, totally agree with this statement:

people say designers should code. Whether you agree with that or not, designers certainly need to define the problem and solution not in pixels, but in terms of describing what happens between components in a system ( http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/)

My job isn't to make things pretty. Rather, it's to make things understandable. Only when aesthetic appeal makes something easier-to-use & understand does it make sense for me to incorporate it into my design.

In other words: A good designer won't just polish a turd.

auggierose• 13 years ago

I stopped reading the article when I saw the image of the Intercom product architecture. Who needs shitty documentation like that?

camus• 13 years ago

The problem with this article is the author doesnt understand that

1/ People are not going to post briefs,diagrams, or product strategies of their clients. No business want these informations to be public. It's like sharing the source code of some proprietary app. Even during an interview you dont do that.

2/ Dribble is for static assets , png ,final results that can be made public, not some hidden documents on the why of the what.

3/ Redesign as an exercice is good,it is not art nor restyling. You have constraints set by the product it self.

4/ Yes, Dribbble is basically a showcase and an inspiration tool for designers ,there is nothing wrong with that.

colmvp4• 13 years ago

Exactly. Dribbble is a canvas where you post whatever the fuck you want knowing that most likely you won't be able to use it anyway. It's a way to say, "look how cool it is", and move on.

It's not unlike posting a snippet of cool JS/CSS/whatever on HN and showcasing it. Yes it's not practical but it COULD be inspirational.

One reason why fashion shows exist is to give trickle inspiration to other fashion designers, not to be an exercise in practicality.

bitwize• 13 years ago

I do not expect a company with a name that seems cribbed straight from the lyrics to "Here Comes Another Bubble" to remain a mainstay of standards in the design world for very long.

This, too, shall pass.

bigiain5• 13 years ago

While I mostly agree with you, I bet the AltaVista team at Digital said the same thing about that stupidly named "Google" company started by those two academics with no business experience…

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

Product design != Graphic design. Theming an app != designing an app. Bye.

pcurve• 13 years ago

I hire UI and UX designers. It is rather difficult to find someone who is truly adept at even one of those skills, let alone both. Throw in HTML/CSS skill, and now this big-picture-focused-thinking mindset, and I might as well go on an albino sasquatch hunt in Central Park. And if you work for a big company like me, you have to stick to a salary range set by HR department for a given position.

This article offers many solid advice for that talented albino sasquatch designer looking to differentiate himself in his job application for a well-funded start up.

But for the rest of us monkeys, having an extremely solid looking visual design skill (even at the expense of being a bit too trendy) will serve us well. These days, I have to go through about 30 resumes to see 1 that has fairly good design skill, and still not Dribbbbbble level.

ibuildthings• 13 years ago

While I agree with the main sentiment of this article, I have a nitpick on the main caption image. For me there is a significant loss of information, when an app summarizes something as non-linear and hard-to-predict as weather into boolean statements. So I am not sure if the umbrella app is solving weather reporting problem correctly.

AtTheLast• 13 years ago

I agree Dribbble favors visual designers. But, there are some really great UX people on there too. Follow the right people and you will get a nice blend of UX and Visual Design.

jared314• 13 years ago

It sounds like you could relate the same statement to using github has hiring criteria. And, I believe enough discussion around that, as an indicator of technical ability, has already happened to say that it is only an indicator of awareness, interest, and activity. I would be interested in knowing how other industries have handled the online portfolio trend. Has SoundCloud affected the hiring of musicians, or YouTube and acting auditions?

The Dribbblisation of Design

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