Comments on: Hiding Behind Good Design

By: J.Bradford

J.Bradford — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:41:40 +0000

as someone who just finished redesigning his blog, i’ll take all this to heart :-)

By: Montoya

Montoya — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:13:47 +0000

“How many times does a person get labeled a design expert because of a great design and shitty writing?”

Every damn day. It sucks that I have to compete in a niche where people rarely value the actual writing, and I can’t get immediate sign-ups because I don’t have a “shiny spanking awesome” design. At least I’m working on it.

By: Dave Allen

Dave Allen — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:46:33 +0000

â€œperhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internetâ€ Thatâ€™s what the Financial Times said about Jakob Nielsen. His site is a wonder to beholdâ€¦ http://www.useit.com/jakob/ just kidding actually as it is probably the most bland layout I have ever seen but the content and the smarts he dispenses can not be beatâ€¦

By: Dave Allen

Dave Allen — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:45:35 +0000

“perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet” That’s what the Financial Times said about Jakob Nielsen. His site is a wonder to behold… http://www.useit.com/jakob/ just kidding actually as it is probably the most bland layout I have ever seen but the content and the smarts he dispenses can not be beat…

By: Christian Watson

Christian Watson — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:26:35 +0000

Ack – Jeff beat me to it. I see functionality and visual design going hand-in-hand. They both work together to solve a problem, which is what design basically is – finding solutions to problems within constraints.

By: Kuba Filipowski

Kuba Filipowski — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:04:46 +0000

Agree with Jeff – I think good design it’s about how it solves interaction – and that we can objectively estimate. Aesthetics is much more individual – basically every one can say, “I don’t like it” about decoration but you can’t say it’s not working when it actually does.

By: Patrick B

Patrick B — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:44:19 +0000

A couple of years ago Volkswagen leaned heavily on hiding behind the design of their cars until Consumer Reports rated them the lowest with regards to car performance.

I think they suffered from bad reliability, not performance. But your point still holds.

And I don’t think your site has a bad design. I’m not a fan of the current look, but the old “whitespace” blog was very innovative.

By: Jeff Croft

Jeff Croft — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:41:50 +0000

Obviously by “design,” you mean “visual design” and “aesthetics,” and that’s cool. But I think it’s really important for designers to understand that *how it works* is part of the design.

I wouldn’t say Volkswagen used to hide behind design — I would say they hid behind *style*, which is a subset of design. After the poor ratings, they stopped putting all their design eggs in the style basket and started putting some of the elsewhere.

Google, by and large, isn’t stylish. But, for the most part, their products are well-designed. It’s be nice if they were stylish too, but I still think most of them are well-designed.

Bottom line: any serious designer needs to understand that design is about communication and problem-solving. Style and fashion are only one piece of that puzzle.

If all you do is style, then you’re a decorator, not a designer.