11 ms·

The Dribbblisation of Design

276 points by pbiggar 13y ago

lcnmrn 13y ago
Dribbble is to design what GitHub is to coding. Case closed.
- justinph 13y ago
  If so, dribbble is like letting you post only the first 5 lines of a README.md without commit history. Not quite the same.
  - lcnmrn 13y ago
    In design world, if you need more than 5 lines, you're doing it wrong.
joelle 13y ago
"Design starts at the top of a company with the company mission. Then the company vision. It’s very hard to do great design in an organisation without a clear and actionable mission and vision. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. If your company lacks a clear mission, make it your job to facilitate the creation of one." This is so true. It's way to easy to get lost in creating beautiful designs, oohing and ahhing at little neat interactions, etc. But if it's not fulfilling the initial goal of what you're trying to accomplish it's sadly a waste of time and resources. That's not to say you can't accomplish both (beautiful design that also meets the goals of the app) - but it's a lot harder than it sounds. And very easy to get derailed. Setting up some periodic checkpoints along the way to keep checking back that you're still on target can definitely help.
coldcode 13y ago
When I read this type of criticism, I always get the impression that everyone thinks they are better at what they do than everyone else.
- klimhn 13y ago
  I felt the same way. Possibly he wants that all UXD, UD to all have the same background, but with a different focus? Maybe he wants someone who is versed in UI and UXD?
- nemothekid 13y ago
  How so? And what is "this type of criticism"? To me it looks like the design world has taken one concept and hyped and warped it, missing the point of the original goals. I don't see this article as any different than the misuse of Hadoop article that was posted yesterday.
  - nilliams 13y ago
    >> And what is "this type of criticism"? Perhaps gross generalisation is a fitting term? Basically it's somewhat insulting to insinuate that designers on Dribbble believe glamour shots are the be-all and end-all of design. I've heard several prominent Dribbblers interviewed on various web design podcasts, they know what it is and what it isn't. >> To me it looks like the design world... Whoah there, you can judge the collective opinion of 'the design world' from your desk?! :)
  - wuliwong 13y ago
    What is "the design world"? Some people made a website (dribbble.com) and some people use it. There is no monolithic "design world".
- djillionsmix 13y ago
  congratulations you are now the 1,000,000,000th internet customer to be linked to the dunning-kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect you're a little bit off: everyone thinks they are shit at what they do, but great at what anybody else does
klimhn 13y ago
Interesting point. I recently started using dribbble and thought, "I wish there was more detail in how they came to that conclusion regarding design, layout, and some information architecture". There have few who actually do, but was dribbble founded with the OP main concern in mind? I have a background in research from working in a Research Lab, IT, and project management. Now I'm starting my career in UXD and UD. From my perspective it helps to start with a wireframe, documenting a sitemap, interview the clients, hell even have a case study (this one is usually over looked), call-to-actions, purpose of the created User Experience. I've met with a couple senior UXD people in the field (who are nice as well, btw) and always say mention people always are trapped in the color schemes, wow factor, and forget that main question: "Who is your user?".
- klimhn 13y ago
  To add: I feel there's attempt for added weight toward the UXD, as he/she is the sole responsible person. People forget that it's a team effort as well.
- abbazabba 13y ago
  I'm in the same boat (background in data/finance trying to eek into UX or prod mgmt). I've noticed it all just boils down to definition. "Design" seems to be evolving from pure aesthetics (what's the first emotion evoked upon sight) to aesthetics+function (what's the first reaction, and how does this affect my audience). Maybe it's because 10 years ago "designer" was purely synonymous with fashion or pure photoshop/illustrator. Now it seems to represent anyone and everyone from graphics/visuals, to interaction and information, and even just product. It makes me wonder though, if there were a dribbble of site flows, wireframes, and creative call-to-actions, would people flock to it?
keithpeter 13y ago
http://creativebeatle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/elements_of_user_experience_design.jpg http://creativebeatle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/elements_o... Referenced in the notes. Very useful.
didgeoridoo 13y ago
If you want designers to stop designing for Dribbble, stop hiring designers on the basis of their Dribbble profiles. Right now, the evaluation and hiring process for designers in most companies is so shallow that cranking out eye-catching niblets is a HIGHLY rational move for designers looking to promote themselves.
- cschmidt 13y ago
  I hired my logo designer off of Dribbble, with excellent results. It probably is less of a problem for logo design, than for something like UX or UI.
  - dreamfactory 13y ago
    Out of interest, how do you measure excellent results?
    - cschmidt 13y ago
      It was a good process. My designer was quick, responsive, fairly priced, and came up with what I think is a great logo. I'm very happy with it, and I consistently get positive feedback ('cool robot'). What do you think: http://www.predictobot.com/ http://www.predictobot.com/ ?
      - plaguuuuuu 13y ago
        The logo is cool. The rest of the front page needs a lot of work.
      - dreamfactory 13y ago
        Well I guess there's criteria for the process (quick, cheap, responsive etc) and criteria for the logo. Typically important reqs would be that it uniquely identifies your brand values/mission, that it 'reads', works well in all sizes (pixel and vector), works well in colour and mono - so I couldn't really say much based on this. Obviously you can't hate it but personally I'd be almost trying to push my taste out of the equation as far as possible and instead focus on a functional list of measurable criteria related to my venture. For the 1% left that is taste/magic/pixie dust, I'd defer that to the designer on the assumption they are highly visually literate and spend all day thinking about it. (I say that having once been an art student so quite a difficult temptation to resist but nobody does their best work with a back-seat driver.)
toddmorey 13y ago
The article contains this gem: ...Redesigns of other people’s work is pure folly e.g. the new Yahoo logo, iOS7, changes to Facebook, the New New Twitter, the American Airlines rebrand. People have no context for the decision making process involved in these projects, no knowledge of the requirements, constraints, organisational politics. First, most of these redesigns are done in good fun, as a thought exercise for the designer. New thinking applied to familiar context. But secondly, it's so important to understand that all brands and interfaces are ultimately judged by your customers, who have "no knowledge of [or patience for] the requirements, constraints, organisational politics." I've just heard that argument way too often used to prop up a poor design outcome. Good design remembers that the context of your product is in the hands of your consumer, not in the conference room of your headquarters. If someone outside your company offers some free thoughts on your brand and identity, it's not a bad idea to look them over. They are relating to you as a customer. (And usually, a huge promoter.)
- smacktoward 13y ago
  The problem with design isn't the designers. It's the clients. Designers can only aim to produce work that challenges "constraints, organisational politics" if the client will allow them to. Very few will. You can explain until you're blue in the face that they're shooting themselves in the foot, but in any organization the easiest and safest thing to do career-wise is to avoid rocking the boat, so very few clients are willing to push back on all the different internal pressures that hobble their projects. It's easier to just accept them and deliver the best thing their internal dysfunctions will allow. (This is as true for consulting coders as it is for consulting designers, btw. Even the original consultant, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, could never get the London police to take his word for things.) And it's easier for designers to go along with that too than it is to refuse to work for clients who insist on shooting themselves in the foot. But it's hard to blame them. Designers gotta eat too, you know? I mean, you can play Howard Roark and refuse to work on anything that's in any way compromised, but since reality isn't a bad novel you may find yourself going your whole life without ever finding a client who meets your standards. And is a brilliant designer who never got around to designing anything really better in the final analysis than a brilliant designer who designed a bunch of nearly-great-but-sadly-compromised things? I dunno.
programminggeek 13y ago
I think a company having a design language and identity is a powerful and wonderful thing. It makes decisions easier, it makes things so much more clear and improves what you do a lot. At a higher level, having a vision, a framework, a filter by which you make choices and solve problems makes the whole process of doing these things easier.
AdamFernandez 13y ago
The web is with us all the time. It’s already moving into our cars, into our clothes, into the things we own, into monitoring our health. Is he using the word 'web' instead of 'Internet'? Does anyone know of the web moving into our clothes?
- ulisesrmzroche 13y ago
  It's a very, very common synonym, short for world-wide web.
  - AdamFernandez 13y ago
    I'm aware. They shouldn't be used interchangeably.
    - vxNsr 13y ago
      Could you expand on that, I've heard people say this but I've never heard a good reason for why, they just assumed I understood it intuitively, when it wasn't too clear at all.
      - SSLy 13y ago
        Well, pardon my analogy: Internet is like roads network - infrastructure which you use to run... WWW, which is type of traffic on road eg. cars
      - johnplaxton 13y ago
        The internet is the world-wide network of computers. The web is HTTP and HTML and other such technologies, that may or may not run on top of the internet, but when they do they form the world-wide-web or web for short. When people talk about clothes on the web, it's nonsense because they probably don't run HTTP.
      - aaronblohowiak 13y ago
        The web is the network of hypermedia documents, the internet is the network of computer networks. A "web page" is a node in the graph of the web. A "computer" is a node in the graph of the internet. For practical purposes, the "internet" is the things that link together using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol and the "web" is things that link together using URIs. The web is content, the net is machinery. When you are on Xbox and playing against someone else, you are playing over the internet but you are not playing over the web. Similarly, you can download web pages but you cannot download the internet.
einai 13y ago
I'm a designer on Dribbble. The work I present on Dribbble and the "actual" work I do for my clients are quite different most of the time. You can think of Dribbble as the "runway" of graphic/UI design - most of the stuff there are for showing off the designers' ability and/or are conceptual. They are fun and beautiful to look at, but not always designed for practical use, just like most people won't wear runway fashion everyday.
- wuliwong 13y ago
  This is exactly how I see it. I just don't see how there's anything wrong with making fun designs, trying new things, hearing people's comments, etc. I am amazed that anybody felt this article was interesting enough to repost. I'm not a designer, but I do a lot of solo projects where I'm responsible for the back and front ends. I enjoy looking around on dribble for ideas and inspiration.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    I dunno – I upvoted it pretty much based on this fragment: " … but work that doesn’t address real business goals, solve real problems people have every day, or take a full business ecosystem into consideration. " That's a conversation I have almost every day with clients, designers, co-workers, and friends. "Pixel pushing" visual design is something that some people are very highly skilled at – and the difference between good visual design and bad visual design is obvious even to those of us without the skills to create "good design", _BUT_, in terms of a product or web project it's the last ~20% of the time/money budget. Unless you've got (in the article's terms) the "Mission" and "Vision" properly articulated, and then the "Outcome", "Structure", and "Interaction" properly thought through, you don't really have enough actionable data or goals to appropriately brief a visual designer. (Having said that, for some businesses and budgets, choosing "existing artwork" and jamming your businesses specific requirements into it might be the right way to go - the same way as most retail stores don't build spaces like Apple Stores, but make compromises based on what's available for rent in the area they want to trade, then "making do" with the space/architecture they end up with. I've helped many clients build inexpensive websites by articulating the solutions to the business problems, then cutting costs by choosing something off somewhere like ThemeForest that's "close enough" and either living with the deficiencys or bodging/hacking over them like a quick paintjob instead of a major shop refitout…)
jessaustin 13y ago
This piece seems to me to inject just the right amount of formalism into this process. That is, I've seen other efforts in this direction build prodigious piles of abstraction, rules, and theory around this mission/vision device and around the equivalents of these four-layer and "jobs" models. Whereas, I can imagine any small group of decision-makers responding productively to this material.
zzzsh 13y ago
The problem is ego, Designers have a too much of it.
jakebellacera 13y ago
While the author gives some great tips about product design, I don't think it's fair to say that Dribbble is belittling product design. You don't really get the full picture with each shot. You don't know what the designer's agenda is with that particular image, whether it's for fun or is going to be implemented in an actual product. I doubt that all designers on Dribbble go in head-first by only caring about the visuals. I can see where the author tried to go with this article, but I don't think that you can really place a single label on an entire community.
rriepe 13y ago
As someone who went through a job hunt without a "Dribbblized" portfolio a couple years ago: Go with the Dribbble approach. At least if you're looking for anything resembling a design job. That final layer of polish and execution is what gets you hired. If you don't have that, you get eliminated immediately. Nobody will ask about your process or your wireframes if your resume gets tossed in the trash bin. You'll never have a conversation about the organizational mission and how it relates to the product if you never get called back for an interview. If you go in with Paul's first three steps (like I did) and you're lucky enough to talk to someone who doesn't eliminate based on that all-important fourth step of visual design, you'll find yourself in disagreement. There's 8,000 ways to build a product, and chances are your method simply won't line up with theirs. Meanwhile, there's also 8,000 ways to make something look good, but all of those ways end up beautiful. It's hard to argue about solid visual design, even if it doesn't fit your particular style or tastes. You can get away with subpar visual design skills at your own startup, like I did, but don't ever expect to get hired without developing those skills. They're more important than the other three combined.
- micheljansen 13y ago
  Well, I guess that depends on what sort of job you are applying for. If you want to focus on how it works, apply for UX/IxD positions and bring a portfolio that demonstrates you can think in those terms. If you're more interested in working on the visual aspects of design, e.g. how it looks, you need to demonstrate polish. I got hired just fine without a single pixel-perfect design in my portfolio. Personally, I wouldn't want to work for someone who only cares about what it looks like anyway.
- Aloisius 13y ago
  As someone who has hired designers over the years for various startups, I agree. The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design. They are not the same thing and often aren't done by the same person. I've had fantastic UX designers who, frankly, can't get perfectly laid out pixel perfect work done or do eye candy. I've had UI/graphic designers who were awful at figuring out flow. I've had people who are great at both. But one thing is certain, I want my products to be intuitive AND sexy because there is a certain subset of the market that will try your product just because it looks professionally designed and is on trend. There is a high overlap of those people with taste makers and I need those people using my product.
denisnazarov 13y ago
What are some resources/guides to design in a Dribbble style? There is obviously a consistent aesthetic (effects, shadows, etc.)
pearjuice 13y ago
If there is anything I hate more than the technique described in the OP, it are websites which don't center content.
williamldennis 13y ago
The author seems to incorrectly conflate UX and visual design. Dribbble is purely for showcasing visual design (aka technical implementation). It's the price of admission for being a designer. Dribbble isn't for, nor should it be for, explaining UX decisions. User experience design and interaction design are different skill sets within the design discipline. If you are impressed with someone's dribbble, then arrange for a phone interview or an in-person white boarding session. Design is problem solving just like engineering, just a different type of problem set. Treat it as such.
true_religion 13y ago
I always thought the point of Dribble was to have someplace to show off your greenfield pie-in-the-sky work to other designers, not to impress clients with how well you can work with their organization.
spader725 13y ago
I agree with this article, but who is to say the goal of Dribbble isn't to just showcase visual design? To join Dribbble, you must get an invite from a Dribbble user. Dribbble users invite people who have similar taste and design state-of-mind as they do. So in the end you get a gated community of designers who think and work alike. The problem with this I see is that non-design people who wants to hire designers think that Dribbble is the "go to" standard of design, without thinking of usability problems their product[s] have that needs solving.
- dmyler 13y ago
  You nailed it. Dribbble excels at featuring and sharing solutions to visual design challenges. Icons. Logos. UI components that show effective affordance (as best you can tell from a small screenshot). I think Dribbble is somewhat a victim of success; everyone wants in and uses it as they see fit.
vxNsr 13y ago
I've actually been having trouble recommending people upgrade to (or purchase new) iOS7 (devices) for this exact reason, even I sometimes don't understand how to use it anymore, so I can't tell my Luddite F&F to use something that costs more and has become as hard to use, as say android. I can only hope that Apple will learn the error of their ways and turn back to function over form.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
brianfryer 13y ago
As a designer, I totally, totally, totally agree with this statement: > people say designers should code. Whether you agree with that or not, designers certainly need to define the problem and solution not in pixels, but in terms of describing what happens between components in a system ( http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/ http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/) My job isn't to make things pretty. Rather, it's to make things understandable. Only when aesthetic appeal makes something easier-to-use & understand does it make sense for me to incorporate it into my design. In other words: A good designer won't just polish a turd.
auggierose 13y ago
I stopped reading the article when I saw the image of the Intercom product architecture. Who needs shitty documentation like that?
camus 13y ago
The problem with this article is the author doesnt understand that 1/ People are not going to post briefs,diagrams, or product strategies of their clients. No business want these informations to be public. It's like sharing the source code of some proprietary app. Even during an interview you dont do that. 2/ Dribble is for static assets , png ,final results that can be made public, not some hidden documents on the why of the what. 3/ Redesign as an exercice is good,it is not art nor restyling. You have constraints set by the product it self. 4/ Yes, Dribbble is basically a showcase and an inspiration tool for designers ,there is nothing wrong with that.
- colmvp 13y ago
  Exactly. Dribbble is a canvas where you post whatever the fuck you want knowing that most likely you won't be able to use it anyway. It's a way to say, "look how cool it is", and move on. It's not unlike posting a snippet of cool JS/CSS/whatever on HN and showcasing it. Yes it's not practical but it COULD be inspirational. One reason why fashion shows exist is to give trickle inspiration to other fashion designers, not to be an exercise in practicality.
bitwize 13y ago
I do not expect a company with a name that seems cribbed straight from the lyrics to "Here Comes Another Bubble" to remain a mainstay of standards in the design world for very long. This, too, shall pass.
- bigiain 13y ago
  While I mostly agree with you, I bet the AltaVista team at Digital said the same thing about that stupidly named "Google" company started by those two academics with no business experience…
Glyptodon 13y ago
Product design != Graphic design. Theming an app != designing an app. Bye.
pcurve 13y ago
I hire UI and UX designers. It is rather difficult to find someone who is truly adept at even one of those skills, let alone both. Throw in HTML/CSS skill, and now this big-picture-focused-thinking mindset, and I might as well go on an albino sasquatch hunt in Central Park. And if you work for a big company like me, you have to stick to a salary range set by HR department for a given position. This article offers many solid advice for that talented albino sasquatch designer looking to differentiate himself in his job application for a well-funded start up. But for the rest of us monkeys, having an extremely solid looking visual design skill (even at the expense of being a bit too trendy) will serve us well. These days, I have to go through about 30 resumes to see 1 that has fairly good design skill, and still not Dribbbbbble level.
ibuildthings 13y ago
While I agree with the main sentiment of this article, I have a nitpick on the main caption image. For me there is a significant loss of information, when an app summarizes something as non-linear and hard-to-predict as weather into boolean statements. So I am not sure if the umbrella app is solving weather reporting problem correctly.
AtTheLast 13y ago
I agree Dribbble favors visual designers. But, there are some really great UX people on there too. Follow the right people and you will get a nice blend of UX and Visual Design.
jared314 13y ago
It sounds like you could relate the same statement to using github has hiring criteria. And, I believe enough discussion around that, as an indicator of technical ability, has already happened to say that it is only an indicator of awareness, interest, and activity. I would be interested in knowing how other industries have handled the online portfolio trend. Has SoundCloud affected the hiring of musicians, or YouTube and acting auditions?

276 points by pbiggar 13y ago

lcnmrn 13y ago

Dribbble is to design what GitHub is to coding. Case closed.

justinph 13y ago
If so, dribbble is like letting you post only the first 5 lines of a README.md without commit history. Not quite the same.
- lcnmrn 13y ago
  In design world, if you need more than 5 lines, you're doing it wrong.

joelle 13y ago

"Design starts at the top of a company with the company mission. Then the company vision. It’s very hard to do great design in an organisation without a clear and actionable mission and vision. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. If your company lacks a clear mission, make it your job to facilitate the creation of one." This is so true. It's way to easy to get lost in creating beautiful designs, oohing and ahhing at little neat interactions, etc. But if it's not fulfilling the initial goal of what you're trying to accomplish it's sadly a waste of time and resources. That's not to say you can't accomplish both (beautiful design that also meets the goals of the app) - but it's a lot harder than it sounds. And very easy to get derailed. Setting up some periodic checkpoints along the way to keep checking back that you're still on target can definitely help.

coldcode 13y ago

When I read this type of criticism, I always get the impression that everyone thinks they are better at what they do than everyone else.

klimhn 13y ago
I felt the same way. Possibly he wants that all UXD, UD to all have the same background, but with a different focus? Maybe he wants someone who is versed in UI and UXD?
nemothekid 13y ago
How so? And what is "this type of criticism"? To me it looks like the design world has taken one concept and hyped and warped it, missing the point of the original goals. I don't see this article as any different than the misuse of Hadoop article that was posted yesterday.
- nilliams 13y ago
  >> And what is "this type of criticism"? Perhaps gross generalisation is a fitting term? Basically it's somewhat insulting to insinuate that designers on Dribbble believe glamour shots are the be-all and end-all of design. I've heard several prominent Dribbblers interviewed on various web design podcasts, they know what it is and what it isn't. >> To me it looks like the design world... Whoah there, you can judge the collective opinion of 'the design world' from your desk?! :)
- wuliwong 13y ago
  What is "the design world"? Some people made a website (dribbble.com) and some people use it. There is no monolithic "design world".
djillionsmix 13y ago
congratulations you are now the 1,000,000,000th internet customer to be linked to the dunning-kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect you're a little bit off: everyone thinks they are shit at what they do, but great at what anybody else does

klimhn 13y ago

Interesting point. I recently started using dribbble and thought, "I wish there was more detail in how they came to that conclusion regarding design, layout, and some information architecture". There have few who actually do, but was dribbble founded with the OP main concern in mind? I have a background in research from working in a Research Lab, IT, and project management. Now I'm starting my career in UXD and UD. From my perspective it helps to start with a wireframe, documenting a sitemap, interview the clients, hell even have a case study (this one is usually over looked), call-to-actions, purpose of the created User Experience. I've met with a couple senior UXD people in the field (who are nice as well, btw) and always say mention people always are trapped in the color schemes, wow factor, and forget that main question: "Who is your user?".

klimhn 13y ago
To add: I feel there's attempt for added weight toward the UXD, as he/she is the sole responsible person. People forget that it's a team effort as well.
abbazabba 13y ago
I'm in the same boat (background in data/finance trying to eek into UX or prod mgmt). I've noticed it all just boils down to definition. "Design" seems to be evolving from pure aesthetics (what's the first emotion evoked upon sight) to aesthetics+function (what's the first reaction, and how does this affect my audience). Maybe it's because 10 years ago "designer" was purely synonymous with fashion or pure photoshop/illustrator. Now it seems to represent anyone and everyone from graphics/visuals, to interaction and information, and even just product. It makes me wonder though, if there were a dribbble of site flows, wireframes, and creative call-to-actions, would people flock to it?

keithpeter 13y ago

http://creativebeatle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/elements_of_user_experience_design.jpg http://creativebeatle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/elements_o... Referenced in the notes. Very useful.

didgeoridoo 13y ago

If you want designers to stop designing for Dribbble, stop hiring designers on the basis of their Dribbble profiles. Right now, the evaluation and hiring process for designers in most companies is so shallow that cranking out eye-catching niblets is a HIGHLY rational move for designers looking to promote themselves.

cschmidt 13y ago
I hired my logo designer off of Dribbble, with excellent results. It probably is less of a problem for logo design, than for something like UX or UI.
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  Out of interest, how do you measure excellent results?
  - cschmidt 13y ago
    It was a good process. My designer was quick, responsive, fairly priced, and came up with what I think is a great logo. I'm very happy with it, and I consistently get positive feedback ('cool robot'). What do you think: http://www.predictobot.com/ http://www.predictobot.com/ ?
    - plaguuuuuu 13y ago
      The logo is cool. The rest of the front page needs a lot of work.
    - dreamfactory 13y ago
      Well I guess there's criteria for the process (quick, cheap, responsive etc) and criteria for the logo. Typically important reqs would be that it uniquely identifies your brand values/mission, that it 'reads', works well in all sizes (pixel and vector), works well in colour and mono - so I couldn't really say much based on this. Obviously you can't hate it but personally I'd be almost trying to push my taste out of the equation as far as possible and instead focus on a functional list of measurable criteria related to my venture. For the 1% left that is taste/magic/pixie dust, I'd defer that to the designer on the assumption they are highly visually literate and spend all day thinking about it. (I say that having once been an art student so quite a difficult temptation to resist but nobody does their best work with a back-seat driver.)

toddmorey 13y ago

The article contains this gem: ...Redesigns of other people’s work is pure folly e.g. the new Yahoo logo, iOS7, changes to Facebook, the New New Twitter, the American Airlines rebrand. People have no context for the decision making process involved in these projects, no knowledge of the requirements, constraints, organisational politics. First, most of these redesigns are done in good fun, as a thought exercise for the designer. New thinking applied to familiar context. But secondly, it's so important to understand that all brands and interfaces are ultimately judged by your customers, who have "no knowledge of [or patience for] the requirements, constraints, organisational politics." I've just heard that argument way too often used to prop up a poor design outcome. Good design remembers that the context of your product is in the hands of your consumer, not in the conference room of your headquarters. If someone outside your company offers some free thoughts on your brand and identity, it's not a bad idea to look them over. They are relating to you as a customer. (And usually, a huge promoter.)

smacktoward 13y ago
The problem with design isn't the designers. It's the clients. Designers can only aim to produce work that challenges "constraints, organisational politics" if the client will allow them to. Very few will. You can explain until you're blue in the face that they're shooting themselves in the foot, but in any organization the easiest and safest thing to do career-wise is to avoid rocking the boat, so very few clients are willing to push back on all the different internal pressures that hobble their projects. It's easier to just accept them and deliver the best thing their internal dysfunctions will allow. (This is as true for consulting coders as it is for consulting designers, btw. Even the original consultant, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, could never get the London police to take his word for things.) And it's easier for designers to go along with that too than it is to refuse to work for clients who insist on shooting themselves in the foot. But it's hard to blame them. Designers gotta eat too, you know? I mean, you can play Howard Roark and refuse to work on anything that's in any way compromised, but since reality isn't a bad novel you may find yourself going your whole life without ever finding a client who meets your standards. And is a brilliant designer who never got around to designing anything really better in the final analysis than a brilliant designer who designed a bunch of nearly-great-but-sadly-compromised things? I dunno.

programminggeek 13y ago

I think a company having a design language and identity is a powerful and wonderful thing. It makes decisions easier, it makes things so much more clear and improves what you do a lot. At a higher level, having a vision, a framework, a filter by which you make choices and solve problems makes the whole process of doing these things easier.

AdamFernandez 13y ago

The web is with us all the time. It’s already moving into our cars, into our clothes, into the things we own, into monitoring our health. Is he using the word 'web' instead of 'Internet'? Does anyone know of the web moving into our clothes?

ulisesrmzroche 13y ago
It's a very, very common synonym, short for world-wide web.
- AdamFernandez 13y ago
  I'm aware. They shouldn't be used interchangeably.
  - vxNsr 13y ago
    Could you expand on that, I've heard people say this but I've never heard a good reason for why, they just assumed I understood it intuitively, when it wasn't too clear at all.
    - SSLy 13y ago
      Well, pardon my analogy: Internet is like roads network - infrastructure which you use to run... WWW, which is type of traffic on road eg. cars
    - johnplaxton 13y ago
      The internet is the world-wide network of computers. The web is HTTP and HTML and other such technologies, that may or may not run on top of the internet, but when they do they form the world-wide-web or web for short. When people talk about clothes on the web, it's nonsense because they probably don't run HTTP.
    - aaronblohowiak 13y ago
      The web is the network of hypermedia documents, the internet is the network of computer networks. A "web page" is a node in the graph of the web. A "computer" is a node in the graph of the internet. For practical purposes, the "internet" is the things that link together using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol and the "web" is things that link together using URIs. The web is content, the net is machinery. When you are on Xbox and playing against someone else, you are playing over the internet but you are not playing over the web. Similarly, you can download web pages but you cannot download the internet.

einai 13y ago

I'm a designer on Dribbble. The work I present on Dribbble and the "actual" work I do for my clients are quite different most of the time. You can think of Dribbble as the "runway" of graphic/UI design - most of the stuff there are for showing off the designers' ability and/or are conceptual. They are fun and beautiful to look at, but not always designed for practical use, just like most people won't wear runway fashion everyday.

wuliwong 13y ago
This is exactly how I see it. I just don't see how there's anything wrong with making fun designs, trying new things, hearing people's comments, etc. I am amazed that anybody felt this article was interesting enough to repost. I'm not a designer, but I do a lot of solo projects where I'm responsible for the back and front ends. I enjoy looking around on dribble for ideas and inspiration.
- bigiain 13y ago
  I dunno – I upvoted it pretty much based on this fragment: " … but work that doesn’t address real business goals, solve real problems people have every day, or take a full business ecosystem into consideration. " That's a conversation I have almost every day with clients, designers, co-workers, and friends. "Pixel pushing" visual design is something that some people are very highly skilled at – and the difference between good visual design and bad visual design is obvious even to those of us without the skills to create "good design", _BUT_, in terms of a product or web project it's the last ~20% of the time/money budget. Unless you've got (in the article's terms) the "Mission" and "Vision" properly articulated, and then the "Outcome", "Structure", and "Interaction" properly thought through, you don't really have enough actionable data or goals to appropriately brief a visual designer. (Having said that, for some businesses and budgets, choosing "existing artwork" and jamming your businesses specific requirements into it might be the right way to go - the same way as most retail stores don't build spaces like Apple Stores, but make compromises based on what's available for rent in the area they want to trade, then "making do" with the space/architecture they end up with. I've helped many clients build inexpensive websites by articulating the solutions to the business problems, then cutting costs by choosing something off somewhere like ThemeForest that's "close enough" and either living with the deficiencys or bodging/hacking over them like a quick paintjob instead of a major shop refitout…)

jessaustin 13y ago

This piece seems to me to inject just the right amount of formalism into this process. That is, I've seen other efforts in this direction build prodigious piles of abstraction, rules, and theory around this mission/vision device and around the equivalents of these four-layer and "jobs" models. Whereas, I can imagine any small group of decision-makers responding productively to this material.

zzzsh 13y ago

The problem is ego, Designers have a too much of it.

jakebellacera 13y ago

While the author gives some great tips about product design, I don't think it's fair to say that Dribbble is belittling product design. You don't really get the full picture with each shot. You don't know what the designer's agenda is with that particular image, whether it's for fun or is going to be implemented in an actual product. I doubt that all designers on Dribbble go in head-first by only caring about the visuals. I can see where the author tried to go with this article, but I don't think that you can really place a single label on an entire community.

rriepe 13y ago

As someone who went through a job hunt without a "Dribbblized" portfolio a couple years ago: Go with the Dribbble approach. At least if you're looking for anything resembling a design job. That final layer of polish and execution is what gets you hired. If you don't have that, you get eliminated immediately. Nobody will ask about your process or your wireframes if your resume gets tossed in the trash bin. You'll never have a conversation about the organizational mission and how it relates to the product if you never get called back for an interview. If you go in with Paul's first three steps (like I did) and you're lucky enough to talk to someone who doesn't eliminate based on that all-important fourth step of visual design, you'll find yourself in disagreement. There's 8,000 ways to build a product, and chances are your method simply won't line up with theirs. Meanwhile, there's also 8,000 ways to make something look good, but all of those ways end up beautiful. It's hard to argue about solid visual design, even if it doesn't fit your particular style or tastes. You can get away with subpar visual design skills at your own startup, like I did, but don't ever expect to get hired without developing those skills. They're more important than the other three combined.

micheljansen 13y ago
Well, I guess that depends on what sort of job you are applying for. If you want to focus on how it works, apply for UX/IxD positions and bring a portfolio that demonstrates you can think in those terms. If you're more interested in working on the visual aspects of design, e.g. how it looks, you need to demonstrate polish. I got hired just fine without a single pixel-perfect design in my portfolio. Personally, I wouldn't want to work for someone who only cares about what it looks like anyway.
Aloisius 13y ago
As someone who has hired designers over the years for various startups, I agree. The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design. They are not the same thing and often aren't done by the same person. I've had fantastic UX designers who, frankly, can't get perfectly laid out pixel perfect work done or do eye candy. I've had UI/graphic designers who were awful at figuring out flow. I've had people who are great at both. But one thing is certain, I want my products to be intuitive AND sexy because there is a certain subset of the market that will try your product just because it looks professionally designed and is on trend. There is a high overlap of those people with taste makers and I need those people using my product.

denisnazarov 13y ago

What are some resources/guides to design in a Dribbble style? There is obviously a consistent aesthetic (effects, shadows, etc.)

pearjuice 13y ago

If there is anything I hate more than the technique described in the OP, it are websites which don't center content.

williamldennis 13y ago

The author seems to incorrectly conflate UX and visual design. Dribbble is purely for showcasing visual design (aka technical implementation). It's the price of admission for being a designer. Dribbble isn't for, nor should it be for, explaining UX decisions. User experience design and interaction design are different skill sets within the design discipline. If you are impressed with someone's dribbble, then arrange for a phone interview or an in-person white boarding session. Design is problem solving just like engineering, just a different type of problem set. Treat it as such.

true_religion 13y ago

I always thought the point of Dribble was to have someplace to show off your greenfield pie-in-the-sky work to other designers, not to impress clients with how well you can work with their organization.

spader725 13y ago

I agree with this article, but who is to say the goal of Dribbble isn't to just showcase visual design? To join Dribbble, you must get an invite from a Dribbble user. Dribbble users invite people who have similar taste and design state-of-mind as they do. So in the end you get a gated community of designers who think and work alike. The problem with this I see is that non-design people who wants to hire designers think that Dribbble is the "go to" standard of design, without thinking of usability problems their product[s] have that needs solving.

dmyler 13y ago
You nailed it. Dribbble excels at featuring and sharing solutions to visual design challenges. Icons. Logos. UI components that show effective affordance (as best you can tell from a small screenshot). I think Dribbble is somewhat a victim of success; everyone wants in and uses it as they see fit.

vxNsr 13y ago

I've actually been having trouble recommending people upgrade to (or purchase new) iOS7 (devices) for this exact reason, even I sometimes don't understand how to use it anymore, so I can't tell my Luddite F&F to use something that costs more and has become as hard to use, as say android. I can only hope that Apple will learn the error of their ways and turn back to function over form.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

brianfryer 13y ago

As a designer, I totally, totally, totally agree with this statement: > people say designers should code. Whether you agree with that or not, designers certainly need to define the problem and solution not in pixels, but in terms of describing what happens between components in a system ( http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/ http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/) My job isn't to make things pretty. Rather, it's to make things understandable. Only when aesthetic appeal makes something easier-to-use & understand does it make sense for me to incorporate it into my design. In other words: A good designer won't just polish a turd.

auggierose 13y ago

I stopped reading the article when I saw the image of the Intercom product architecture. Who needs shitty documentation like that?

camus 13y ago

The problem with this article is the author doesnt understand that 1/ People are not going to post briefs,diagrams, or product strategies of their clients. No business want these informations to be public. It's like sharing the source code of some proprietary app. Even during an interview you dont do that. 2/ Dribble is for static assets , png ,final results that can be made public, not some hidden documents on the why of the what. 3/ Redesign as an exercice is good,it is not art nor restyling. You have constraints set by the product it self. 4/ Yes, Dribbble is basically a showcase and an inspiration tool for designers ,there is nothing wrong with that.

colmvp 13y ago
Exactly. Dribbble is a canvas where you post whatever the fuck you want knowing that most likely you won't be able to use it anyway. It's a way to say, "look how cool it is", and move on. It's not unlike posting a snippet of cool JS/CSS/whatever on HN and showcasing it. Yes it's not practical but it COULD be inspirational. One reason why fashion shows exist is to give trickle inspiration to other fashion designers, not to be an exercise in practicality.

bitwize 13y ago

I do not expect a company with a name that seems cribbed straight from the lyrics to "Here Comes Another Bubble" to remain a mainstay of standards in the design world for very long. This, too, shall pass.

bigiain 13y ago
While I mostly agree with you, I bet the AltaVista team at Digital said the same thing about that stupidly named "Google" company started by those two academics with no business experience…

Glyptodon 13y ago

Product design != Graphic design. Theming an app != designing an app. Bye.

pcurve 13y ago

I hire UI and UX designers. It is rather difficult to find someone who is truly adept at even one of those skills, let alone both. Throw in HTML/CSS skill, and now this big-picture-focused-thinking mindset, and I might as well go on an albino sasquatch hunt in Central Park. And if you work for a big company like me, you have to stick to a salary range set by HR department for a given position. This article offers many solid advice for that talented albino sasquatch designer looking to differentiate himself in his job application for a well-funded start up. But for the rest of us monkeys, having an extremely solid looking visual design skill (even at the expense of being a bit too trendy) will serve us well. These days, I have to go through about 30 resumes to see 1 that has fairly good design skill, and still not Dribbbbbble level.

ibuildthings 13y ago

While I agree with the main sentiment of this article, I have a nitpick on the main caption image. For me there is a significant loss of information, when an app summarizes something as non-linear and hard-to-predict as weather into boolean statements. So I am not sure if the umbrella app is solving weather reporting problem correctly.

AtTheLast 13y ago

I agree Dribbble favors visual designers. But, there are some really great UX people on there too. Follow the right people and you will get a nice blend of UX and Visual Design.

jared314 13y ago

It sounds like you could relate the same statement to using github has hiring criteria. And, I believe enough discussion around that, as an indicator of technical ability, has already happened to say that it is only an indicator of awareness, interest, and activity. I would be interested in knowing how other industries have handled the online portfolio trend. Has SoundCloud affected the hiring of musicians, or YouTube and acting auditions?