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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

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.

TheZenPsycho 13y ago
The author isn't conflating. That is what the words mean, and "UX" is the made up wank word. It's the "Web 2.0." of the design world. I'm pretty sure "UX" was created as a term in response to the market getting flooded with stylists (interested amateurs) calling themselves "designers". I'm interested to see what you believe to be the distinction between "visual design" and "graphic design". Traditionally, Graphic design is about how it works, with how it looks (what you call "eye candy") being secondary to (but still a part of) function. This is the sort of thing you can learn if you read books instead of just reading blog posts. And clearly, the definition of "graphic design" has been watered down to the point of irrelevance, and replaced with "UX". sure, fine call yourself whatever you want. But what makes you think UX won't get similarly watered down? The problem isn't the word itself, it's that the culture as a whole doesn't value design, including "designers". (in your language, the culture doesn't value "UX") Of course language is designed* by its users, and for the moment, it seems that we have indeed fully rotated our hierarchy words a notch down over the past 20 years. But please let us not be ignorant of history, and tradition, and what "graphic design" actually is (Or at least.. .used to be) and that the whole totem pole of design and designers is sliding on a downward trajectory. (I blame adobe for making it look easy. you could always look more convincingly like a skilled professional while operating a huge desk sized typesetting machine and laying out magazines by hand with paper, exacto blades, and photographic color separations) But sure, maybe inventing new wank words will prop up our careers for 5 more years. It's good marketing. it's good design, to invent words, to sell ourselves. Inventing a new word for "design" is a very designery thing to do. You can make design seem interesting and exciting again by giving it a new flashy buzzword. That will only take you so far though, until the novelty wears off, and suddenly you find everyone believes "UX" means "interested amateur who can make eye candy in photoshop" again. * see what I did there? "Design" being used to denote the decisions involved in how something works and is experienced, with no reference to how anything looks. Imagine that.
- eflowers 13y ago
  I can't tell if you're saying that visual/graphic designers are saying they are doing "UX", or if "UX" people are really just hand-waving visual designers? I got lost around "wank word" and UX being the "Web 2.0 of the design world." Most UX people I know are focused on user research, usability, information architecture, and interaction design. I'd say maybe, 1 in 5 are visual designers, and maybe 1 in 3 have any passable graphic design skill at all. Maybe you're saying that people will be just called "user researcher", "information architect", etc etc and not use the word UX. But I think "wank word" is a tad inaccurate.
  - ryanSrich 13y ago
    I'll agree with what TheZenPsycho said and add my own bit. I think designers are getting worse and worse at doing one aspect of design and so they ignore it and latch onto a term that purposefully disregards that aspect. So a UX designer would scoff at the visual design aspect because that's not part of their job. In most cases, outside of huge companies, a designer does pretty much every aspect of what most people consider to be design; visual, UX, UI, Information architecture, research, and branding. That's what designers are trained to do, that's the point of being a designer, you NEED to know how to do all of these things in order to call yourself a designer.
  - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
    I am saying that "Design" encompasses a lot of skills, many of which are "invisible" to most laymen- much in the same way that most of the code a developer writes is "invisible" making two pieces of software that outwardly appear to operate identically, can, in terms of code structure, maintainability, be vastly different in quality. Most people in hiring positions couldn't give two shits that a designer is supposed to do more than just make things pretty- And so they hire people who call themselves "designers" that actually are little more than glorified photoshop operators. Why? because these "designers" are cheaper than these other "designers" and it's not obvious why. The amateurs undercut the professionals. This puts the real designers, the ones with educations, that actually know design principles, typography, psychology, etc, and have years of experience- in the difficult situation of having to distinguish themselves from these interested amateurs- these "stylists". So I believe, in a turn of marketing genius, some designers came up with the term "UX", and insist that it is NOT this lowly "design" thing, as you know it. It's this totally different thing that is /more/ than just making things look pretty. Even though, all the things under the "UX" banner are familiar to people with design educations as "design". That's what "Design" is. UX is just "Design". These are the normal things that you have to do to make a design work. But how do you communicate that? How do you communicate that Javascript and HTML are capable of so much more now, than they were 5 years ago? You come up with a buzz word. Ajax. Web 2.0. HTML5. To experts who actually know their craft, these are obvious wank words. Meaningless checkboxes that accountants and recruiters can look for on resumes, designed to repackage skills that are decades old as something new and exciting. But this is hacker news. We shouldn't have to use bullshit marketing terms here. That's for recruiters. That's for clients. Cut the shit, I say. Use the real words with their real meanings.
dreamfactory 13y ago
Even graphic design isn't about eye candy but about function - graphic design is at base macrotypography. What we seem to have in web design is a deeply ingrained culture of amateurism - can you imagine if we had designers adding gradients, page-curls, and drop-shadows on airport signage? The thing that scares me is that in future we might as the definition and function of a professional designer is completely eroded.
- Aloisius 13y ago
  > can you imagine if we had designers adding gradients, page-curls, and drop-shadows on airport signage? Instead we have designers adding lighting and depth to create gradients and shadows. Good golly, have you been to a modern airport recently? Sure form follows function, but there is absolutely no hesitation on the part of designers to degrade function to make things sexy unless you work in government. Let's not pretend that the offline world isn't concerned with aesthetics any less than the online one is.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression 'as pretty as an airport'. Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk, and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs. They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the departure gates, presumably on the assumption that they are not" – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul (In all honesty, I suspect I'm guilty of producing several websites that could easily be accused of those same faults – though I don't _think_ I've ever accidentally sent anyone to Murmansk…)
brianfryer 13y ago
> The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design I can see that. What I got from the author is that "sexy" should be emergent and not fundamental.
- colmvp 13y ago
  Depends. I think with consumer related startus, sexy is pretty important.
rhizome 13y ago
Isn't "pixel-perfect" for online design an anti-pattern yet?
normloman 13y ago
Nobody is saying UX and graphic design are the same. But even graphic designers have practical concerns that override aesthetics. Choice of typography must suit readability. Layout must emphasize the most important elements of a document in a visual hierarchy. The things I see on dribble's home page are pretty, not practical. And all the circlejerking in the comments threatens to turn the site into a web designer's version of DeviantArt.

TheZenPsycho 13y ago

The author isn't conflating. That is what the words mean, and "UX" is the made up wank word. It's the "Web 2.0." of the design world. I'm pretty sure "UX" was created as a term in response to the market getting flooded with stylists (interested amateurs) calling themselves "designers". I'm interested to see what you believe to be the distinction between "visual design" and "graphic design". Traditionally, Graphic design is about how it works, with how it looks (what you call "eye candy") being secondary to (but still a part of) function. This is the sort of thing you can learn if you read books instead of just reading blog posts. And clearly, the definition of "graphic design" has been watered down to the point of irrelevance, and replaced with "UX". sure, fine call yourself whatever you want. But what makes you think UX won't get similarly watered down? The problem isn't the word itself, it's that the culture as a whole doesn't value design, including "designers". (in your language, the culture doesn't value "UX") Of course language is designed* by its users, and for the moment, it seems that we have indeed fully rotated our hierarchy words a notch down over the past 20 years. But please let us not be ignorant of history, and tradition, and what "graphic design" actually is (Or at least.. .used to be) and that the whole totem pole of design and designers is sliding on a downward trajectory. (I blame adobe for making it look easy. you could always look more convincingly like a skilled professional while operating a huge desk sized typesetting machine and laying out magazines by hand with paper, exacto blades, and photographic color separations) But sure, maybe inventing new wank words will prop up our careers for 5 more years. It's good marketing. it's good design, to invent words, to sell ourselves. Inventing a new word for "design" is a very designery thing to do. You can make design seem interesting and exciting again by giving it a new flashy buzzword. That will only take you so far though, until the novelty wears off, and suddenly you find everyone believes "UX" means "interested amateur who can make eye candy in photoshop" again. * see what I did there? "Design" being used to denote the decisions involved in how something works and is experienced, with no reference to how anything looks. Imagine that.

eflowers 13y ago
I can't tell if you're saying that visual/graphic designers are saying they are doing "UX", or if "UX" people are really just hand-waving visual designers? I got lost around "wank word" and UX being the "Web 2.0 of the design world." Most UX people I know are focused on user research, usability, information architecture, and interaction design. I'd say maybe, 1 in 5 are visual designers, and maybe 1 in 3 have any passable graphic design skill at all. Maybe you're saying that people will be just called "user researcher", "information architect", etc etc and not use the word UX. But I think "wank word" is a tad inaccurate.
- ryanSrich 13y ago
  I'll agree with what TheZenPsycho said and add my own bit. I think designers are getting worse and worse at doing one aspect of design and so they ignore it and latch onto a term that purposefully disregards that aspect. So a UX designer would scoff at the visual design aspect because that's not part of their job. In most cases, outside of huge companies, a designer does pretty much every aspect of what most people consider to be design; visual, UX, UI, Information architecture, research, and branding. That's what designers are trained to do, that's the point of being a designer, you NEED to know how to do all of these things in order to call yourself a designer.
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  I am saying that "Design" encompasses a lot of skills, many of which are "invisible" to most laymen- much in the same way that most of the code a developer writes is "invisible" making two pieces of software that outwardly appear to operate identically, can, in terms of code structure, maintainability, be vastly different in quality. Most people in hiring positions couldn't give two shits that a designer is supposed to do more than just make things pretty- And so they hire people who call themselves "designers" that actually are little more than glorified photoshop operators. Why? because these "designers" are cheaper than these other "designers" and it's not obvious why. The amateurs undercut the professionals. This puts the real designers, the ones with educations, that actually know design principles, typography, psychology, etc, and have years of experience- in the difficult situation of having to distinguish themselves from these interested amateurs- these "stylists". So I believe, in a turn of marketing genius, some designers came up with the term "UX", and insist that it is NOT this lowly "design" thing, as you know it. It's this totally different thing that is /more/ than just making things look pretty. Even though, all the things under the "UX" banner are familiar to people with design educations as "design". That's what "Design" is. UX is just "Design". These are the normal things that you have to do to make a design work. But how do you communicate that? How do you communicate that Javascript and HTML are capable of so much more now, than they were 5 years ago? You come up with a buzz word. Ajax. Web 2.0. HTML5. To experts who actually know their craft, these are obvious wank words. Meaningless checkboxes that accountants and recruiters can look for on resumes, designed to repackage skills that are decades old as something new and exciting. But this is hacker news. We shouldn't have to use bullshit marketing terms here. That's for recruiters. That's for clients. Cut the shit, I say. Use the real words with their real meanings.

dreamfactory 13y ago

Even graphic design isn't about eye candy but about function - graphic design is at base macrotypography. What we seem to have in web design is a deeply ingrained culture of amateurism - can you imagine if we had designers adding gradients, page-curls, and drop-shadows on airport signage? The thing that scares me is that in future we might as the definition and function of a professional designer is completely eroded.

Aloisius 13y ago
> can you imagine if we had designers adding gradients, page-curls, and drop-shadows on airport signage? Instead we have designers adding lighting and depth to create gradients and shadows. Good golly, have you been to a modern airport recently? Sure form follows function, but there is absolutely no hesitation on the part of designers to degrade function to make things sexy unless you work in government. Let's not pretend that the offline world isn't concerned with aesthetics any less than the online one is.
- bigiain 13y ago
  "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression 'as pretty as an airport'. Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk, and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs. They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the departure gates, presumably on the assumption that they are not" – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul (In all honesty, I suspect I'm guilty of producing several websites that could easily be accused of those same faults – though I don't _think_ I've ever accidentally sent anyone to Murmansk…)

brianfryer 13y ago

> The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design I can see that. What I got from the author is that "sexy" should be emergent and not fundamental.

colmvp 13y ago
Depends. I think with consumer related startus, sexy is pretty important.

rhizome 13y ago

Isn't "pixel-perfect" for online design an anti-pattern yet?

normloman 13y ago

Nobody is saying UX and graphic design are the same. But even graphic designers have practical concerns that override aesthetics. Choice of typography must suit readability. Layout must emphasize the most important elements of a document in a visual hierarchy. The things I see on dribble's home page are pretty, not practical. And all the circlejerking in the comments threatens to turn the site into a web designer's version of DeviantArt.