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My comments are based on experience working on projects where some designers (who went to art school) heard Steve Jobs say "design is how it works, not how it l
by petilon 4y ago
My comments are based on experience working on projects where some designers (who went to art school) heard Steve Jobs say "design is how it works, not how it looks" and then decided that they own the "how it works" part. The result, from what I have seen, is disastrous.
Functional design (how it works) and visual design (how it looks) is really two different job functions. You don't need an art degree or even be good in art in order to design the functionalities or even interactions of a product. At the same time, being good in art and designing cool looking UI doesn't make you qualified to design the functionalities or interactions of the product. Not even close.
Both job functions are needed to build a good product. In rare cases one person may be able to do both.
- doctor_eval 4y agoJobs said, "In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service." Design is not just one thing or another. It happens at each layer. From deciding how many options you want to present to the user, to how they will be presented. Or deciding how to deal with errors in the backend, versus reporting them in the front end. Design decisions are made the whole way through. I think this is visible with lots of Apple products because some people complain that they aren’t flexible enough. But reducing configurability is as much a design decision as the colour of the icons. (And sometimes more challenging)
- petilon 4y ago> Design is not just one thing or another. It happens at each layer. I think we are in agreement. "How it works" is design. "How it looks" is also design. Sometimes, but not usually, one person may be able to do both types of design.
- esafak 4y agoUX vs UI
- illiarian 4y agoI wish that whoever made this "distinction" never made it. Because now people just blindly repeat this, and it makes no sense. UI (user interface) is a part of UX (user *experience).
- esafak 4y agoUX often involves research and customer interaction. UI is more straight up visual design, informed by the UX research. The same person might not do both. Do you think they should?
- illiarian 4y agoYes. Yes, they should. A person who does UI and doesn't have first-hand experience on what customers want and do is not a UI designer. That person is a dribbble illustrator.
- doctor_eval 4y agoI remember clearly the first time I ever heard the term “UX”. It was condescending explained by some guy from Google to a quite technical audience of telcos, many years ago. For reasons I couldn’t explain, it pissed me off. Later, they produced Material Design. The prosecution rests, your honour.