Why have today's designers stopped dreaming?

http://www.creativebloq.com/computer-arts/stopped-dreaming-41411268

by chestnut-tree • 12 years ago

61 49 12 years ago

aaron9872• 12 years ago

I couldn't agree more. For a "creative" profession, there is a startling lack of creativity among designers. I'll admit that I am not a designer by any means, so maybe I just don't fully understand the challenges and issues that designers have to deal with. However, I do get annoyed when I show up on a site and it looks and behaves just like every other site, with the same fonts, same colors, and text that doesn't tell you anything about the product. It really does get old.

vdaniuk• 12 years ago

Uniformity in user interfaces is an emergent property when many website owners optimize for UI ease of use. Who would want to sacrifice pageviews, conversion rates, purchases for non-standard interfaces? Also Bootstrap is very easy to use and solves the problem for website owners and users.

keithpeter• 12 years ago

Could be a founder principle: A few successful Web sites use a given UI approach, people get used to that, so new Web sites copy approach to minimise learning time. Couple that with Bootstrap's availability.

Example: Windows 95, 98, ME, and XP all had a panel at the bottom with a menu ('start') button on the left. That became normal for a computer. Anything different (Canonical's Unity, Gnome's Gnome-Shell) is seen as 'problematic'.

Reference: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the bit about the early history of motorbikes and the surprising range of arrangements.

dasil0032• 12 years ago

The difference between art and design is that design serves a concrete purpose. Obviously there is creativity involved in designed, but the creativity of a good designer is about solving problems. This manifests in different ways, but for interactive or industrial design usability is the most important concern, and therefore, all else being equal, uniformity across sites is a good thing. Forms of visual design whose primary concerns are either/or attention-grabbing (eg. billboards, posters) or communication (eg. magazine, flyers) naturally enjoy a bit more creative leeway.

With established norms stabilizing on the web, UI creativity there can and should decrease. However that said, there is always the possibility for optimizing towards narrower and more specific problems, but this must be done sparingly since new interactive paradigms introduct a cognitive load on the user which may not be acceptable for the intended audience.

aaron9872• 12 years ago

Well in terms of layout and functionality, sure, I understand the need for consistency. My comment was referring to the artistic element of color schemes and fonts. That is the part that gets annoying when everybody does it the same. You can have consistency of function while being creative with colors and things like that. I love it when I show up on a site with bold colors and unique design ideas. It gives me the impression that the company is willing to try new things.

ChrisNorstrom• 12 years ago

Design was never about creativity (surprising the user, being unique, being different), it was about letting the user get things done. Now that this has been achieved what more do you want? It's like fashion industry people wondering why everyone's cloths are so boring. Their idea of fashion is art and expression, the normal person's idea of fashion is usage.

The more "different" and "creative" and "unique" your site's design is, the more trouble and friction a user encounters trying to learn how it functions. So every site on the net looking similar might piss off designers but for users it's a joy.

sparkie3• 12 years ago

If design was just about letting the user get things done, can we conclude that iPad is terribly designed? I can do almost nothing productive on it.

noir_lord• 12 years ago

Getting things done and productivity are not the same.

If the thing I want to get done is watching a movie while I'm on a train then the iPad works well.

If I want to edit some code then a laptop is better.

6d0debc071• 12 years ago

You may not be the customer they had in mind for it though ;)

robotys• 12 years ago

Nope, but they only keep their dream in the head. Client want other useful design (not dream) right now.

bitL• 12 years ago

There is just too much of "me too" in design nowadays.

I was really dismayed when MS came up with Metro/Modern and suddenly most vocal designers flipped switch and started to produce designs inspired by the new MS's design language. No creativity there at all, just plain boring simplistic uniformly colored boxes.

I guess even Apple caught the metroitis with iOS 7. No idea what went on over there, from UI that was appreciated as the most beautiful, polished and envied it just borrowed approach from the most controversial that many find disgusting (hey, was the default color palette chosen by color blind people?).

We had the same problem when hiring designers for our creative product - most designers just flat out copied all sorts of ugly trendy flat designs. I really don't want my app to look like it was designed by the 5-year old Miró that just discovered boxes in MS Paint.

What is happening in design? Is it the same thing that happened with classical music when modernists completely broke historic standards and started to produce "intellectual" music that maybe 5% of population can appreciate, the rest just suffers through?

I can automate creation of ugly boxes/flat stuff myself, I don't need designers to do that. From a designer I would expect something original, expression of craftmanship that will discern my work from the others. Not uniformity.

seanmcdirmid2• 12 years ago

Microsoft didn't invent flat design or Swiss typography. These are just old ideas whose time came around...again. Design is not about recreating the wheel or even invention, but tasteful application of ideas (most non original) to provide the best experience to the user. Being inventive doesn't guarantee (or even help) with that.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Not to mention Microsoft's Metro wasn't exactly original to begin with:

http://www.trendastic.com/wp-content/uploads/Metro-AOL-vs-Me...

mako-taco• 12 years ago

how unfortunate it would be if we found ourselves on a local maxima and maintained this attitude

raverbashing• 12 years ago

Creating is hard, copying is easier

And once created, and people get accustomed to that language, it makes it easier for them to use (everybody knows what an x in the corner of a window does)

sparkie3• 12 years ago

No time for dreaming, busy patching for IE.

Silhouette2• 12 years ago

Perhaps the essential question we should be asking ourselves each time we approach a new site design project is: why would we not choose to be different?

Isn't this an obvious, if unfortunate, commercial reality? The fact is that cheap, mass-produced products have a large market that is willing to pay for them.

If you can make such products with less time and money than you would need to create original, thoughtful, customised work for every job, then you have a viable business model. Moreover, your business model can be implemented by people who don't have the skill and creativity required to do bespoke work.

Fortunately, there will always be a market for premium sites, with original designs that are carefully planned with the site's goals in mind, and with a look and feel that are matched to the client's brand. There will always be clients who need a completely custom web app to fit their particular needs. And these kinds of client will always be willing to pay a premium for good work.

For better or worse, there are simply a lot more clients who don't have that kind of budget, and for whom a site that is built from a decent template with a basic CMS in half a day does the job well enough. And there are even more who don't want a template that is exactly like everyone else, but can settle for the work of a newbie web developer who doesn't know much but can manage to fire up Yeoman and throw together some HTML5 Boilerplate and Bootstrap and a couple of jQuery plug-ins.

seanmcdirmid2• 12 years ago

I'm a researcher married to a designer. My wife has many more creativity constraints in her job then I do in mine, but she builds usable products for today while I get to think 5-10 years out.

vayarajesh• 12 years ago

very true, specially in the field of web-design. If you browse the latest 10 pages of themeforest.net templates you will find all similar designs (infact exactly what you mentioned in your article in a detail manner :) )

Since the comeback of flat design everybody is becoming a designer because all they need to do is put big pictures and 1 or 2 colors and bordered boxes and vola! you are a designer

jedrek• 12 years ago

Looking for cutting edge design on themeforest is like looking for culinary innovation at a 7-11.

crazygringo• 12 years ago

Perhaps the essential question we should be asking ourselves each time we approach a new site design project is: why would we not choose to be different?

Um, because we've figured out what works for landing pages, in an overall sense. Being different probably means forgoing conversions, which can translate into failure.

This isn't to say there isn't still room for improvement, of course. But improvement is now more incremental, with lots of A/B testing and whatnot. And for good reason.

If designers still want to be wild and creative, there are still plenty of places to do it, like personal blogs or personal projects or working on specific projects that value cutting-edge design because it fits their unique market.

But for most websites struggling to turn a profit or just gain traction period, "dreaming" is not a luxury they have. And it's disingenuous of the author to suggest that this is somehow a failure, no matter how faux-inspirational it may sound.

gdubs• 12 years ago

Pretty bold claim that the tired design described (in such a funny way) in the article is some kind of über design and all subsequent designs will be incremental tweaks on it...

Isn't it a little like saying everything should be written in Java because it's safe and who can afford to take risks?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained I'd say. Taking a bit of risk on marketing can help differentiate. Isn't it also a risk to go with what's common, blending in with the pack?

derefr• 12 years ago

I think the claim is something more like:

• UX is good when it works in tandem with human cognition and psychology.

• HCI science--the study of human cognition and psychology, as it relates to doing UX--can point us toward designs that are objectively better in their human usability.

• A design radical-enough to not look or work like current UX--a novel "UX paradigm"--would, at this point, necessarily be one that ignores what we currently know about HCI. It would therefore, probably, be horrible. (Individual designs from such a novel paradigm could be surprisingly okay, if they manage to find some other local maximum in UX-space--but since the paradigm goes against the grain of human intuition, it wouldn't generate any globally optimal designs.)

Zigurd• 12 years ago

It's a good question, but an impoverished blog post. There are no Big Ideas since the Desktop Metaphor was discredited. That's not to say design has fallen asleep. You can of course get highly trained highly competent and highly experienced design inputs to a product. But, it's more about filtering what works from what doesn't. Who is reaching for a new paradigm?

Maybe Facebook's buy of Occulus Rift will ignite an arms race in 3D design that leads to something really new, if the daunting literalism of 3D can be overcome.

neilsharma• 12 years ago

Can you provide some examples of creative, non-cookie-cutter websites that you think work well? I agree with your general sentiment, but examples of alternative designs would be a little more actionable and inspirational imo.

fidotron• 12 years ago

This is very similar to the argument made here: http://montrealrampage.com/king-ludd-10-the-tedious-tyranny-...

Unsurprisingly, I agree with the conclusion, that services which happen to be delivered over networks actually have little place doing much branding at all, and users should be in a position to take more control of the look and feel. CSS etc. simply isn't enough, and simultaneously isn't accessible enough to normal people.

As it stands the incentives for design innovation are getting wiped out by a need to not offend anyone.

pcurve• 12 years ago

I think we all know that this type of article indicting designers for lack of creativity isn't something new. But I certainly can related to the author's sentiment and here's my take on it; the number of good web designers with proper design training only accounts for a small percentage of the people producing web sites.

Despite web design being a visual medium, not everybody working in the industry is a visual web designer. There are print designers struggling to make transition, there are developers doing designs out of necessity, and there are people who are learning everything from scratch. And the nature of the Web makes it's easy to lift and 'borrow' things from other people, so you will see a lot of convincingly good designs that are not necessarily produced by designers with design training.

Most web work can be copied with basic use of Photoshop, access to stock photos and portfolio sites, and some attention to details. But there is only so much you can do when you don't know how to draw, use and mix colors, lay-out types. This will contribute to sites looking the same. A trained designer has much bigger set of tools and skill-set at his or her disposal. Simply knowing how to draw well, opens up all sorts of creative possibility, but it's a skill that takes a long time to develop.

So in a nutshell, I don't think it's that designers have completely given up dreaming. It's just become harder to find great designer's work because the denominator of non-designers has grown so large.

There are other contributing factors, such as increasing number of stakeholders now driving designs in the name of semantic design, usability, accessibility, codeability and maintainability, but I'm sure others will touch on those issues.

calinet6• 12 years ago

The people copying the look and feel of the "startup page" are not designers, they're generally developers who want a quick site that looks familiar and gets the job done. More people than ever are creating for the web, but they're not all designers. The technology has lowered the requirements so much that almost anyone can create a web site, and that's not a bad thing—more people should be able to communicate through this medium, and we should embrace that.

But if you look at sites, personal or otherwise, of actual designers, you will find creativity. Creativity—the act of creative design—is what defines a person as a designer in the first place.

You could say the same of photographers these days. Anyone seems to be a photographer; but there are still a scant few who are artists.

"Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere." Give them a chance. Copying is but the first step.

noclip• 12 years ago

It's definitely a bit surreal that even a crypto library vulnerability not only has its own web site but that the site is almost indistinguishable, like every other site launched today, from an Apple product announcement page.

potatolicious• 12 years ago

Why does it need to be distinguishable? It's a purely informational site whose intent is to educate its users.

If anything this is exactly the sort of site that should follow an expected format, so that users spend more time digesting the information presented instead of learning where everything is.

It's like a restaurant menu - there is some variation between every one, but ultimately they conform to an expected format, and that's a good thing.

There's being different in order to improve upon something, and there's being different for the sake of being different.

rglover2• 12 years ago

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I'm glad Elliot is the one bringing it up. Back in 2007 when I first got started on the web, I remember being really excited about seeing new work released from my favorite designers.

Elliot was hands down one of my favorites for his use of type and textures. I even recall sitting up late one night (4 or 5 am since he lives in England) to see his personal site get a revamp.

Nowadays, I pay little attention, seemingly because of things like Dribbble. This excessive desire to share removes any anticipation from the work and in essence, makes it less exciting to see. I don't think I'm the only one that feels this way.

Speaking for my own work, it's just not as fun to spend time crafting a really cool design when you know that it will be seen and tossed aside in a few days. I'd argue this is mostly subconscious, but I do find it belittling my work before it even finds a solid focus.

One thought on this struck me not too long ago while reading The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Balthasar Gracián:

“Never show half-finished things to others. Let them be enjoyed in their perfection. All beginnings are formless, and what lingers is the image of that deformity. The memory of having seen something imperfect spoils our enjoyment when it is finished. To take in a large object at a single glance keeps us from appreciating the parts, but it satisfies our taste. Before it is, everything it is not, and when it begins to be, it is still very close to nonbeing. It is revolting to watch even the most succulent dish being cooked. Great teachers are careful not to let their works be seen in embryo. Learn from nature, and don’t show them until they look good.”

Sharing is great, but I think it's become more of an addiction to feed than a process for improving the craft at large.

copperx• 12 years ago

It's funny how that quote encourages perfectionism and, if applied to development, would discourage anyone from creating a minimally viable product (MVP).

rglover2• 12 years ago

It won't be popular, but I'd argue that the MVP school of thought is responsible for a lot of junk being introduced into the world (when it didn't need to be). Inevitably, when given a route that appears easy or is misinterpreted as such, people will cut corners and act as thought they've "done the work."

I'd say all of this plays into a bigger whole, but that the majority lies in the favor of junk/homogeneity is no mistake.

geargrinder• 12 years ago

A lot of similarity of websites has to do with usability. If I go to a website that is similar to others I frequent, it is easier to figure out what to do. This is proven out in user testing. Those sites that are familiar will do better in converting and win those A/B tests.

How many times have you been to a site with a different design and have to spend a few minutes trying to figure out the navigation? If you are trying to get your users to do something, familiarity is what wins.

Maybe our common definition of creativity is wrong. Good design isn't always "new and cool." Often the best design simply achieves a goal within given parameters.

lnanek2• 12 years ago

I'd kind of prefer it if they stopped dreaming and started working seriously. I've converted a couple Android apps to Google's new design style with unlabeled action bar icons in the top and other flat design concepts and they all just fell flat with users. Users could find a big, glossy, 3D button at the bottom of the app great. Make it a single color icon without a label and hardly any of them find it, or even try it. Designers really need to stop dreaming and start being a little more practical. Sure Google's and flat design look nice. But they don't work well. It's just silly designer dreaming without real usage data supporting it.

en4bz• 12 years ago

The same thing happened with the removal of the menu button on Android. They moved one of the most used buttons from the most convenient spot, right beside my thumb, to the top of the screen. On top of that screens these days are almost all over 4.5 inches, much larger than the average thumb. Same thing goes for applications with drawers. The drawer icon is a far as possible from my thumb making it the least practical design imaginable. I find apps with the split action bar to often be the most practical and convenient even though they don't look as good.

fredgrott• 12 years ago

has to do with screen size and orientation...

because android has more screen size variations the most common orientation is landscape and thus reason for moving the menu button location

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

Oddly, on mobile this site robs 33% of my screen with persistent header and footer elements.

See: this is a web page.

http://justinjackson.ca/words.html

zw123456• 12 years ago

A while back someone said to me "you don't work for a company, you work for the Valley". The meaning that the valley has become an entity unto itself. If that proposition is true, then the valley has become something equivalent to a large organization, like a big company, but much more of a loose confederation. But like other large organizations, it can be come lethargic and stuck in their ways. Only people who are connected the right way get opportunities and there is a set bureaucracy and so on. There has been an argument going on whether a large organization can be innovative. Another interesting question is whether a loosely confederated organization like the valley can loose it's innovativeness for the same types of reasons large organizations have trouble being innovative?

pzuraq• 12 years ago

Design is fashion. It's trends. And personally, I really like the flat trend (though that's the modernist in me, I also enjoy Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe while many look at their designs as stale).

I agree that cookie cutter sites are becoming more common, but that's because most designers are following the trend. Flat is fresh after years of skeuomorphic design literally everywhere. It's simple, it's clean, and yes, there isn't much you can do within those parameters. That doesn't make it bad design.

Look at any arbitrary modernist building. 90% of the time, it's terrible: boring, simple shapes; uninspired color choices; too much concrete. At the time it was a breath of fresh air. Moreover, when it's done right, it's beautiful forever:

http://www.fallingwater.org/img/home_assets/new_first.jpg

http://www.theconservationcenter.com/Farnsworth%20House.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--ru1VYyd8Dw/TrdHRcLZrrI/AAAAAAAAAa...

Kluny• 12 years ago

Some people are extraordinary and blaze trails. The rest of us do our best with existing tools that are known to work. What's the problem? It's the same as it ever was. If you think you can come up with a better design, go nuts. If no one else adopts it, it's probably not quite as good as you think it is.

radley• 12 years ago

Cars, clothes, homes, and furniture all found a standardization. We barely had computer UIs 20 years, so UI design was of an indeterminate form. Now we know the basics form and rules, thus design is now in the details.

PuzzleHouse• 12 years ago

no suitable resources for implementation.

jinushaun• 12 years ago

Because dreaming gives us infinite scrolling bullshit "ux"

Why have today's designers stopped dreaming?

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