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Good Design
- sv7n 11y agoGreat article, definitely a good mantra to keep in my head when I struggle against muggle resistance...
- achow 11y agoIrony considering the author starts with her experience at OneNote. OneNote (desktop) possibly is the worst designed software in Microsoft Office suite. I find the following quote from Chris Pratley (creator of OneNote) interesting "You know you have a good design when you show it to people and they say, “oh, yeah, of course,” like the solution was obvious.". No wonder OneNote is so heavily into literal metaphor of a notebook, which frankly does look and feel clumsy inspite they attempting to polish it up a bit off late (it used to look plain ugly till couple of years back). From official Microsoft document: The user interface is specifically designed to look like a 3-ring binder, complete with tab dividers. Users can divide the notebook into multiple topics and subtopics for the various types of information they want to record and save. Workers have all the advantages of an old fashioned notebook binder with the additional advantages of being able to copy information from one section to another... Document link: https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiplu6ijLvKAhVCbY4KHavzB4IQFgggMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2F1%2Fa%2F2%2F1a298a90-6894-46ef-86de-9d74704d1e3b%2FOneNoteBenefitsWhitePaper.doc&usg=AFQjCNEjvKxQ44E3QDrw5mAXMrG7iu7HhA&bvm=bv.112064104,d.c2E https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web...
- douche 11y agoWhat's wrong with OneNote? I quite like it. The only thing that I'm not psyched about is the fact that I have at least three different Microsoft accounts, and all three have separate notebooks that aren't always easy to sync and switch between. But this is a common problem across everything that uses Microsoft account authentication.
- radiorental 11y agoWe (a group of designers) have been evaluating one note for remote collaboration. Aside from it's egress architectural shortcomings it is non-intuitive in a number of aspects. 'Good design' is sooo much more than the world view laid out in the article. For an organisation like MS, 50% of the job is defending a proposal against 'design by committee' and navigating group politics. Don't get me wrong, it's a good article but only half the battle, if that! One note has promise but it's clear that a lot of the design intent got ambushed as the product made it's way out the door.
- sp332 11y ago*egregious Anyway "intuitive" is not a top priority if you're designing for power users.
- jcassell 11y agoBut don't you think that even power users desire some system of quick learn-ability? Or do they simply enjoy reveling in their hard-to-come-by knowledge that would deter the average user? I'm hearkening back to Final Cut 7 days here.
- sp332 11y agoSure, it would probably help. But it's not that important - I mean the product isn't going to succeed or fail on the basis of its intuitiveness. For example, look at all the pinches and swipes that Apple products support. Those aren't intuitive. They made sure to run TV ads for months showing the pinch-to-zoom feature so that people would know how to use it.
- bpchaps 11y agoIf you consider command line as an interface, the number of people who just don't "get it" is huge. POSIX compliance and similar exist for a reason, and yet we have garbage utilities where help, --help, -help, ?, -?, "", info, --info, $1 help, help $1, etc all exist and do effectively the same thing. "Power" users need love, too. Looking at you, systemd folk.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoWhat about that OneNote design is bad? It may look ugly to you but I find it serves its purpose well. It's a metaphor the kind of people who use it will understand.
- achow 11y agoWell, not answering directly but following illustrates the point: Apple's iOS7, Well, It Was Time For Skeuomorphism To Die http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/09/19/apples-ios7-well-it-was-time-for-skeuomorphism-to-die/#2715e4857a0b70d98891444b http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/09/19/apples-io... One of the bad example of Skeumorphism of Apple http://dun4nx4d6jyre.cloudfront.net/assets/findmyfriends.jpg http://dun4nx4d6jyre.cloudfront.net/assets/findmyfriends.jpg. Note the 'hand stitched' detailing. OneNote could have continued to do things well without using clumsy, awkward, out of place design language.
- makecheck 11y agoThere's nothing wrong with a hand-stitching look. Making an app look interesting is not the problem. The issues with skeuomorphism occur when the attempt at making a "real life" object imposes restrictions on functionality that would not have existed otherwise. For example: - Making something look like a "book" causes designers to try too hard to shove things into a two-page view when computers are outstanding at being far more flexible than a book (e.g. multiple resizable columns, scrolling, and so on). - Making something look like a "dial" just makes it unnecessarily hard to interact with when using a mouse or even a touch screen. Interface elements designed for use on computers are superior.
- Silhouette 11y agoThank you. I wish people wouldn't just equate skeuomorphic design and bad design to be trendy (particularly when they don't know what "skeuomorphic" actually means, as often seems to be the case). As you say, there is nothing wrong with having details or styling in a UI, particularly if they are cosmetically attractive, as long as form still follows function. I think a lot of people on the flat design bandwagon try to create a false dichotomy with skeuomorphism and try to use this as an excuse. All too often, I suspect they really prefer flat design for other reasons, such as not being any good at more sophisticated styling but also not wanting to hire a digital artist onto a project team, or wanting to avoid anything where the implementation requires real graphics instead of whatever severely limited tools are available using nothing but CSS and the icon font from their favourite UI toolkit. I'm not saying no flat design has ever been done well, but all too often I think it's just lazy and/or unskilled design and the anti-skeuomorphism dogma gets wheeled out to try to justify it in some more flattering way.
- tacos 11y agoThis article is a clumsy and self-centered retelling of "Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design" from 40 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Rams#Dieter_Rams:_ten_principles_for_good_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Rams#Dieter_Rams:_ten_p...
- elasticode 11y agoGreat post. Thanks for sharing. The same way a great song sounds familiar the first time you hear it, good design feels comfortable and effortless from the first second.
- ryandrake 11y agoSuch a qualitative view of design--Nothing about measurement or business goals. I would argue that one design is better than another only if it can be shown to improve whatever business results you're looking to improve. Are you trying to increase 7-day retention? Get more people through the sign-up funnel? Increase conversion? Test the candidate design next to the old one and see if it's actually improving things. "A bunch of other designers think this is a great design" is not really good justification for spending development hours implementing it.
- pygy_ 11y agoThese principles extend beyond commercial product design. The API and thus the ergonomics of a programming library come to mind, for example.
- tacos 11y agoGood luck testing it without developing it. And double good luck getting something without investing in it. Apply business process after you actually have the kernel of a product, which includes a product design.
- Drdrdrq 11y agoA/B testing is definitely a way to go - when you have enough users! And it only helps you decide between solutions you already have.
- samtp 11y agoLots of focus on too many restraints, but I'd say poor design can just as often be the result of not enough restraints.
- tinbad 11y agoI have an issue with all the designers who claim to have found the X number of design principles to create 'good' design. There's just something wrong with trying to define anything as 'obviously good'. What's obviously good for me might not be for someone else and the current landscape of incoherently designed interfaces/products/OSes/webpages we use every day just proves to me that if there was such a thing like an obviously good design we would not be in the mess that we call UX/UI design today.
- amelius 11y agoI guess it is like beauty, which is culturally defined. But, as we're heading towards a monoculture (everybody the same OSX MacBook, and thus the same GUI preferences), design preferences become increasingly similar for everybody. Not for me, however, as I still prefer the CLI in most cases.
- pc86 11y agoPreferring something based on productivity or ease of [power-]use does not necessarily mean you prefer that design.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI disagree. UX/UI design has to be obvious, people need to know what to do, without having to ask for help or look at a manual. And 'obvious' is easy. Certain arrangements that already exist are basically universal. People know where to look, people understand certain symbols. Use those, don't try and reinvent them. Use what people know. Trying to be clever is what dooms design.
- mden 11y agoTrying to be clever is the main thing that has led to progress and eventual better design. Amazon's drop down menu comes to mind - http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-...
- z3t4 11y agoGood design is when your hopes and expectations come true meaning: When you do a user action, like double clicking, the application should do what you expect and hope it will do.
- jbssm 11y agoGood design: Then we are taken to a page with a banner so big that you have to realize that you need to scroll way past the bottom of the screen to actually reach the content.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago"Obviousness comes from conforming to people’s existing mental models. Don’t waste time reinventing common UI patterns or paradigms unless they are at least 2x better, or you have some critical brand reason to do so." This is a beautiful insight. I wish everyone understood this. There's ZERO reason to reinvent the wheel with design.
- vlehto 11y agoSome decades ago some architect said "why do we need a facade? Isn't it redundant?". Noww I can't find main entrances to buildings. Please stop this experiment.
- csours 11y agoI can't even figure out how to get on the property sometimes - see the old EDS "Mothership" in Plano! [1] Amazingly, the front desk was on the 4th or 5th floor archway - which you could not get to without getting past a badge reader. (that's the way I remember it anyway) Street signs, entrances, etc should be optimized for both first time users and everyday users; which is difficult, but without that traffic goes slower and you have more accidents, people get frustrated and hate you. [1] https://h71044.www7.hp.com/campaigns/2011/events/POD/images/HP_Campus_EXC_Map.pdf https://h71044.www7.hp.com/campaigns/2011/events/POD/images/...
- ryanSrich 11y agoWhat an overly simplistic view of what makes design good (as if that can even be defined). Taking any advice from a designer at Facebook is a dangerous game to play. It's very likely you work for a company that is structured entirely differently than anything close to Facebook. What makes design "good" at your company is going to depend wholeheartedly on the market you serve (which is not going to be 1 billion people large).
- johanbrook 11y agoThe idea of that "good design" is something you "just recognize" is somewhat related to the ideas in the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", but replaced with "Quality". Really good read.
- tsunamifury 11y agoHere are some more abstract tips that might apply to more than just Facebook's mentality. 1) Have a clear workflow that matches your business and your user goals. 2) Make it as short as possible. 3) Don't have dead ends. 4) Make sure 4/5 people in your target market can jump into it and accomplish the task within a few seconds without asking any questions. (This is a good target for a V1 release, V2 and beyond should reach for 9/10 or more) The rest is mostly trend and opinion. Good design is just good HCI -- fast (both quick and understandable) interfaces to complete a task.
- simi_ 11y agoThis made me think of "The Making of: Dust", which describes the iterative (and serendipitous) process of creating [two of] the most well-known Counter Strike maps. I think it's a brilliant how a design that feels obvious involves a lot of work and uncertainty. http://johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust http://johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772521
- munificent 11y ago> Better design does not mean more design. Often, the most obvious designs are invisible. I think "design" is ambiguous here. You can look at it as meaning "effort that went into creating something", where "design" is the thing that designers do at their desk. Or you can think of it as quantity of "stuff" in the end product that a person experiences and consumes. Every button, doo-dad or blob of pixels in an app. Each nut, bolt, accessory or function in a thing. In that sense, my personal definition of good design is doing more design work to deliver less design stuff. A designer's job is to spent time chewing up and swallowing complexity so the user doesn't have to.
- pcurve 11y agoI agree with this in principle but today's so-called designers are enamored with minimalist designs to user's detriment, relying too much on white space.
- beat 11y agoAfter reading this, I went through and read all the other linked essays she wrote. Good stuff!
- jcassell 11y agoI feel that rule number 2, "If you cannot get a group of people for whom your product is designed for to generally agree that your design is good, it’s not good," is generally a double-edged sword. That is, do people outside of design generally know what is or isn't good? Rule no.3 stating that a group of designers must decide if a design is good or not is far more relevant to what actually is good design, verses the general populace. That's like asking a group of patients if they think the drug that's being made seems good enough with several side effects or not, verses asking pharmaceutical experts on the matter.
- creeble 11y agoI think both points of view have merit, but the user pov should probably be more heavily weighted. My experience with user testing is that if you give someone a UI and watch what they do with it (without instruction), you will quickly get a feel for how close to the mark your design is. Different users have different expectations of course, so you need to do this with a fair range of users.
- markmcdonald 11y agoI agree. Users loving a solution is much more valuable than designers loving a solution.
- jcassell 11y agoTrue, and I do think there is strong validity in blind user testing so as to better shape and improve initial designs to a more finished form. However, I do think there is some merit in getting those in the actual field of functional and "good" design (as the author defines it) to weigh in on why precisely your design is just that. In my own UI/UX research, users all too often miss fully comprehending the painstaking research and work that goes into truly effective and good design. I guess what my argument really is is that I would prefer to weigh more heavily the affirmation of those in the design field rather than a broad range of users with no particular ethos concerning design. Of course, who we end up designing for is the normal user, and what they think is indeed important. However, if 100 people said my design was good vs. hearing that from, say, Mike Matas, I would pick Mike Matas.
- brlewis 11y agoFrom gmail's first UX designer: 75% of good UX design is determining in which ways to not be too clever. https://twitter.com/kfury/status/627350727891906560 https://twitter.com/kfury/status/627350727891906560
- ytdht 11y agothe other 25% is: try very hard not to change anything?
- pcurve 11y agoWhen Gmail came out, it was widely panned. It continued to get panned for years for some bizarre design decisions. (let's hide all text labels, let's make compose new email in a popup, let's not let user 'delete' but 'archive'etc, threading... ) Now people don't complain as much, because everyone just got used to it. Google makes some terrible UX across the board.
- quanticle 11y agoAgreed. The Material Design refresh for Google Maps replaced a design that had clear affordances with a completely flat, static-looking view. I'm sure it looked great on some Powerpoint slide shown to the higher-ups at Google, but it was a disaster for actual usability.
- pcurve 11y agoyup, and the worst part of material design is, indiscriminate use of bright colors for no apparent reasons. And now everyone is doing the same thing, and 50% of UI look exactly the same.
- brlewis 11y agoPeople eventually accepted the clever and novel UX decisions in gmail, so you know Kevin isn't saying "figure out where not to be clever" for lack of his own cleverness; he's saying it because it's true.
- profinger 11y agoI think it's ironic because it's on medium and the first thing that comes up is a giant, stupid, unnecessary picture that is full screen and could lead people to believe that there's nothing more to the article.
- michaelpinto 11y agoThis: "Better design does not mean more design. Often, the most obvious designs are invisible." This also reminds me of the Steve Jobs approach of being proud of all the times that they said "no".
- diego_moita 11y agoToo bad he isn't around anymore to say that to the Apple Watch user interface.
- interlocutor 11y agoLoved the article, but I don't like Julie's redesign of Facebook. Am I the only one? To remind yourself, here's pictures of older facebook designs: http://getlevelten.com/blog/julie-miller/if-you-didnt-design-mobile-redesign-mobile http://getlevelten.com/blog/julie-miller/if-you-didnt-design... I prefer the 2010 design by a mile. FWIW, I also prefer Gmail's old design.
- pcurve 11y agoI think the current photo-centric design just reflect's change in people's behavior shaped by growth in mobile phone usage.
- wingerlang 11y agoHow has the timeline changed? I can't remember the last time I actually looked at someone profile to be honest.
- justicezyx 11y agoLike most articles on medium: self-bluffed nonsense...
- neosat 11y agoThe article feels ...well 'obvious'... but without any real insights into what good design really is. It's a little bit like saying "What's a good investment" - One that makes you money. Or "What's good code" One that doesn't have bugs. It tell you something that's obviously true, but there isn't much you can do with the info. Compare that with a nugget of wisdom from Charles Eames - someone who actually built things that designers can look upto. Humble, to the point and not obvious but insightful. Is there a design ethic? There are always design constraints and these usually include an ethic.