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Design is a Side Effect
- alex1 17y agoUX is a science and visual design is an art. I think they are both equally important. The UX guy is like an architect, but even if he comes up with a nice building layout, no one wants to live in wood and cement foundation. UX and visual design go hand-in-hand and both are needed to create something compelling. In web design, collaboration between the UX guy and visual designer is very important, as the things they do are equally important.
- Alex3917 17y agoVisual design is only an art if you're doing it wrong. It's no coincidence that design is a synonym for fate. The goal of design to force the user to do something or feel something, and you can only do this if your design is incorporating predictable elements. Which is pretty much the opposite of art, where you're testing novel elements to see what change they produce in people.
- Mz 17y agoYour remark makes me think of some show on HGTV where they were staging a property and the stager talked about using art and other visual design elements to maneuver people down the hall, right past the so-so kitchen, and on to the great view and living space at the end to make the place sell. If you know what you are doing, web designers can similarly direct attention, etc, of the user.
- Mz 17y agoThe article makes me think of a principle from mapmaking: A good map is typically described as "beautiful" but a beautiful map isn't necessarily a good map. If you design/engineer it properly to do a particular job well, it tends to have a certain elegance and visual appeal. In contrast, adding all kinds of froo-froo crapola to the map may make it look like art but cease to function effectively as a map.
- asolove 17y agoThis assumes that "design" should be narrowly construed as "decoration" that "solves a problem" (like: "what color should the header font be to make it stand out?") On the other hand, the whole UX movement and firms like Adaptive Path have shown that, if we consider the real brand (customer experience) as a design possibility, and let traditional design methods drive not just decoration but also the complete architecture of how the customer interacts with us, we can find much better solutions. It isn't as simple as "find out what your customers want," especially in emerging markets.
- Estragon 17y agoI don't know. I'm reading The E-myth Revisited at the moment, and it claims that salespeople sell 10-15% more when they're dressed in blue than when they're dressed in brown. The OP seems to assume that most purchasing decisions are based on rational assessments of experience with the products under consideration, but results like the blue/brown experiment suggest that there is a lot more going on, and seemingly irrational factors can have a huge impact on customer decisions. If that's the case, the "froofy" aspects of design rejected by the OP can have a significant business impact and should not be ignored. But it does make sense to subject those aspects to rigorous testing rather than just spend weeks talking about them, as described in the OP.