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Comment by lwhi | Hacker News Reader

You're missing the point.

Aaron doesn't work on the off-chance that someone will accept his work.

There aren't multiple people doing exactly the same thing as Aaron - completing for a single chance.

I don't think I am. I never said Aaron and the potential designers are in the same position. I was merely responding to sudont's notion that a person's time must always be compensated by an up-front, cash contract. In reality, people spend their time on many things for many different reasons.

My understanding is http://www.no-spec.com/ is a reaction to businesses exploiting designers through spec work (if that's wrong, please enlighten me). There is no one exploiting anyone here, just a developer who would like his open source, zero revenue, app to look presentable.

A designer who only opens photoshop for cash probably won't be interested, but a designer who also loves to design in their free time may.

In that way, Aaron and a potential designer may very well be similar. They don't treat their craft as a day job, but more as a lifestyle.

The poster you responded to, was suggesting that a decent designer could be matched to the project before the majority of the work takes place.

This makes sense.

If you have a competition - the amount of effort expended is far greater, and much of that combined effort will have been spent for nothing.

There's a commonly held assumption that design takes only a little bit of effort, and that it's so remarkably fun that little or no reward is required by its practitioners.

This assumption is wrong, and even if it wasn't .. what's the point in creating a design that stands a very good chance of not being used?

You're right that a competition isn't the most efficient solution from a total effort / end result perspective.

However, that's not what competitions are designed to provide. This isn't a corporate productivity debate.

Competitions generate excitement, stroke entrant's competitive nature, provide some openness (in cases where the public participates), and promotes more out of the box thinking.

You see it all the time with sports, the increasing number of hackathons (where yes, developers, designers, and others spend X hours building something nonstop for zero guaranteed reward), government initiatives (challenge.gov), etc.

Religiously calling all competitions/contests bad because there are some companies which exploit the characteristics of a challenge is a bit naive.

Note: I recognize that design is time intensive and not always fun. Hell, it's the same thing for developers.

For me, the debate isn't so much about corporate productivity - it's more about respect for people's time and effort.

I understand what you're saying - but maybe we'll have to agree to disagree.

Competitions too often seem like an excuse for cheap labour.

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