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> Everyone bullshits at some point, but there seems to me to be a particular desire to show design decisions as being based in some empirical facts. In some way

> Everyone bullshits at some point, but there seems to me to be a particular desire to show design decisions as being based in some empirical facts. In some ways this is admirable, and forces designers to justify their design decisions. Analytics have certainly been one cause of this. As a designer I've always felt that the larger and more important chunk of design work is purely intuitive. Analytics implies time-dependence which is counterproductive to design when included upfront. The only time quantifiable metrics are used is when a design is married to user experience in the context of a user interface (in the end product). At that point, patterns and practices dictate the baseline from which feedback takes place. This is commonly referred to as a design system and is done on a larger horizontal scale across interfaces (web, mobile, print, and so on). Company branding, medium | message, target audience, color schemes/themes and other aspects of functional design are comprised more of intuition than raw analytics, in my opinion. Apple provides a great example of design choices that focus on the human aspect first. [0] Added to that, the fact that market share is happily split amongst vastly different UI approaches is testament to the non-linear nature of design. While designers are plenty, good design is not. Science based models as cited in the article are there to bring up the rear in a standardized manner but don't provide avenues to true "novelty" that defines great design. Just my two cents. [0] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/overview/themes/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

TuringTest 8y ago
> As a designer I've always felt that the larger and more important chunk of design work is purely intuitive. Quite true. However there is some value in applying rational analysis to design, and doing it can help to be a good professional: If your design is (partially) based on rules (like following exact ratios in proportions, applying color palette increments and color complements...), these rules create a design space that you can explore by changing the parameters to those rules in a systematic way. This exploration allows you to generate * a lot * of slightly different possible solutions for the design, many of which you wouldn't have created spontaneously. Ultimately, you select the right choice by intuition; but seeing a lot of possibilities can help you to find details that you wouldn't have considered otherwise.
ben509 8y ago
> As a designer I've always felt that the larger and more important chunk of design work is purely intuitive. It's a highly trained intuition. From watching artists work, they have a tremendous amount of experience with color, form, different materials and composing those visual elements, and then with understanding the emotional impact they have on an audience.
byset 8y ago
I basically agree, I think that most good design work is done based on intuition, but designers should be able to justify design decisions, and criticize them, based on objective criteria, especially for aspects of a design that further some functional purpose of a product rather than being simply aesthetic or decorative in nature.
marcus_holmes 8y ago
I totally understand the desire to quote some exterior authority in the face of idiot managers whose nephew/niece once thought about going to art school and thinks that the font choice is wrong... After all, if it's just your opinion then everyone has one of those, and why is yours so much better? Just because you've spent decades working on and obsessing about design, that doesn't make your opinion worth anything more, right? But if it's backed up with SCIENCE, well that's totally different. You can't argue with SCIENCE, can you?

TuringTest 8y ago

> As a designer I've always felt that the larger and more important chunk of design work is purely intuitive. Quite true. However there is some value in applying rational analysis to design, and doing it can help to be a good professional: If your design is (partially) based on rules (like following exact ratios in proportions, applying color palette increments and color complements...), these rules create a design space that you can explore by changing the parameters to those rules in a systematic way. This exploration allows you to generate * a lot * of slightly different possible solutions for the design, many of which you wouldn't have created spontaneously. Ultimately, you select the right choice by intuition; but seeing a lot of possibilities can help you to find details that you wouldn't have considered otherwise.

ben509 8y ago

> As a designer I've always felt that the larger and more important chunk of design work is purely intuitive. It's a highly trained intuition. From watching artists work, they have a tremendous amount of experience with color, form, different materials and composing those visual elements, and then with understanding the emotional impact they have on an audience.

byset 8y ago

I basically agree, I think that most good design work is done based on intuition, but designers should be able to justify design decisions, and criticize them, based on objective criteria, especially for aspects of a design that further some functional purpose of a product rather than being simply aesthetic or decorative in nature.

marcus_holmes 8y ago

I totally understand the desire to quote some exterior authority in the face of idiot managers whose nephew/niece once thought about going to art school and thinks that the font choice is wrong... After all, if it's just your opinion then everyone has one of those, and why is yours so much better? Just because you've spent decades working on and obsessing about design, that doesn't make your opinion worth anything more, right? But if it's backed up with SCIENCE, well that's totally different. You can't argue with SCIENCE, can you?