3 ms·

Ask HN: How do I validate/test if I am getting better at design?

• woah 14y ago
  The thing that will enable you to design at a real level, is being able to assess designs, including your own. "Having an eye" "Taste". Start getting opinionated about other designs you see. Look at every detail. Be harsh in your evaluation. Then go back to your own work and be just as harsh. (It helps if it isn't work that you just finished). Just keep designing and being critical of other designs. After a while, show some of your stuff to professional designers and ask them to be honest about it. Learn from this. Even if you never are able to learn to do good design on your own, this practice will allow you to direct designers much better at some later stage in your career. Gaining an "eye" is also the only way you can be a real designer. You can't A/B test stuff in your head. Putting a bunch of elements, both UX and visual together into a coherent whole in your head, using taste is the only way you can break past local maxima and really come up with new things. A/B testing is to polish after.
• rikacomet 14y ago
  apply for related jobs, if you get accepted, theirs your validation, no need to actually join though. another approach would be to enter online contest, via deviantart.com or something.
• sdnguyen90 14y ago
  "good design" is subjective. being a good designer is being able to draw specific emotions from viewers in my opinion
• sbuk 14y ago
  What do you mean by 'design'? Aesthetics? You can't. It's too subjective and too nuanced to be 'validated'. If you want to find out if people like your stuff, try and join dribbble. If you mean design in the true sense of the word, are your solutions merely adequately solving the problem or are they elegant? Have a look at the 10 principles for good design from Dieter Rams (https://www.vitsoe.com/gb/about/good-design https://www.vitsoe.com/gb/about/good-design) and see if they apply to your solutions.