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A plea to designers.... Read the original piece carefully and try to avoid being defensive. This is an important post for all of you. I've been a defender of De

A plea to designers.... Read the original piece carefully and try to avoid being defensive. This is an important post for all of you. I've been a defender of Design and designers for 2 decades now. But you all are your own worst enemies. This post should serve as a chance for all of you to learn why you are often Balkanized in business decisions and business structures. It should serve as a chance for you all to show that you actually understand business realities and can propose rational arguments. Instead, reading through these comments I see pretty much nothing but personal opinion, vigorous hand-waving, very poor and stretched-to-breaking analogies and the usual "because it means this to me" and "because I say so" and "because... Apple" arguments. I'd suggest reading again with the mindset of "this is the way non designers think about us" and then come back and (with facts this time) explain your perspective. And remember... this is Hacker News. We work at Start-ups. We believe in shipping early, shipping often, and iterating to improve. Your answers and perspective MUST work within this construct or we will ignore you (and you will thus teach all of us that designers are, in fact, crazy). Ball's in your court.

malachismith 14y ago
Oh... and as a hint, if your response includes ".. you don't understand .. " at any point... please understand that you are insulting the person you speak to.
fpal3 14y ago
> This post should serve as a chance for all of you to learn why you are often Balkanized in business decisions and business structures. It should serve as a chance for you all to show that you actually understand business realities and can propose rational arguments. Heh. Because "business decisions" are always so rational, demonstrating a genuine understanding of the product and what the people that actually are going to use it will want from it? > And remember... this is Hacker News. We work at Start-ups. We believe in shipping early, shipping often, and iterating to improve. Your answers and perspective MUST work within this construct or we will ignore you (and you will thus teach all of us that designers are, in fact, crazy). Sigh. Some of us want to ship genuinely high-quality products, not ship whatever we manage to shit out every other day. If my users are noticing my bugs (or design faults), that adds up to an aggregate middling opinion of my product. One thing you got right -- I do want to be Apple, not Time Warner Cable. > Ball's in your court. Not really. You sound like someone that will willingly produce mediocre products, and I don't really know why anyone interested in excellence (and the rewards that it brings) would want to work with you. So this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy for yourself.
- greggman 14y ago
  You sound like someone who ships a mediocre product because you run out of time trying to perfect everything and end up having to leave stuff unfinished because of deadlines. Most products have a budget and deadlines. Your job as a designer is to do the best job you can given the time and money allotted. There are very few projects that have unlimited time and unlimited money. I've been on too many projects where designers didn't get that and given the promises to distributors, retailers and advertisers we had to ship a worse product than we wanted to because the designers spent to much time perfecting certain elements and not giving enough time to others.

malachismith 14y ago

Oh... and as a hint, if your response includes ".. you don't understand .. " at any point... please understand that you are insulting the person you speak to.

fpal3 14y ago

> This post should serve as a chance for all of you to learn why you are often Balkanized in business decisions and business structures. It should serve as a chance for you all to show that you actually understand business realities and can propose rational arguments. Heh. Because "business decisions" are always so rational, demonstrating a genuine understanding of the product and what the people that actually are going to use it will want from it? > And remember... this is Hacker News. We work at Start-ups. We believe in shipping early, shipping often, and iterating to improve. Your answers and perspective MUST work within this construct or we will ignore you (and you will thus teach all of us that designers are, in fact, crazy). Sigh. Some of us want to ship genuinely high-quality products, not ship whatever we manage to shit out every other day. If my users are noticing my bugs (or design faults), that adds up to an aggregate middling opinion of my product. One thing you got right -- I do want to be Apple, not Time Warner Cable. > Ball's in your court. Not really. You sound like someone that will willingly produce mediocre products, and I don't really know why anyone interested in excellence (and the rewards that it brings) would want to work with you. So this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy for yourself.

greggman 14y ago
You sound like someone who ships a mediocre product because you run out of time trying to perfect everything and end up having to leave stuff unfinished because of deadlines. Most products have a budget and deadlines. Your job as a designer is to do the best job you can given the time and money allotted. There are very few projects that have unlimited time and unlimited money. I've been on too many projects where designers didn't get that and given the promises to distributors, retailers and advertisers we had to ship a worse product than we wanted to because the designers spent to much time perfecting certain elements and not giving enough time to others.