A Call to All UI Designers: Do Not Play Skype’s Game
kaishinlab.com
kaishinlab.com
Some 14-year-old designer is not cheapening the work we do by submitting logos for free to a bunch of companies hoping to get exposure. Out-of-work designers are not taking all the other freelance jobs because they decided to do some blog layouts at $50 a pop.
Designers: get over yourselves.
If you, as a designer, truly feel the work you are doing is better than a design competition, then don't submit your work to a design competition. If you're really that good, freelancers offering services for cheap, near-free, or even free shouldn't bother you at all.
Also, "keep in mind that you are betraying the design community?" Design community? What design community? The design industry looks like this:
1. Top-tier ad agencies/teams like Psyop, Leo Burnett 2. Smaller ad agencies 3. Freelance designers 3a. Unemployed designers
So who is our hypothetical 14-year-old logo-designing student hurting? Ad agencies. If your work is really worth that much more or is that much better, companies will pay handsomely for it. If they won't, it's you that's the problem, not the designers submitting free or near-free spec-work.
Apologies for the rantiness of this comment.
Edited for typos.
I consider it unethical for a company to throw a smokescreen instead of solving the real problem. And my piece was all about shedding some light on this.
Engineering and accounting, your two comparison fields, don't suffer this problem.
In those two fields, you can see that when supply is unfettered, compensation does fall. For example, accountants in Canada make fairly good money, but unlicensed "tax preparers" do not.
A better comparison for software engineers would be with interns working for free just to gain experience, freeware or FOSS.
Either my cell phone drops its signal, or it doesn't. Either my books balance and my checks clear, or they don't. In engineering and accounting, there are absolute and obvious measures of success.
When it comes to UI design, who decides when the design is successful? My boss? He approved the Pontiac Aztek. Lord help us all.
On the extreme end, you can say a design definitely doesn't work if a large percentage of users can't accomplish their goals or get frustrated in trying, but you can easily run into situations where half your users love a feature and will be frustrated without it, and half hate it and will have fits if you don't change it. Of course, these are the kinds of issues UI designers are paid to resolve, but there will rarely-to-never be total agreement between a designer, a client, and the client's customers on which aspects of a design work and which don't. Not so in development.
Yes, they've made an argument to society. And that argument is not entirely empty or "social engineering". With engineers, the argument is that the cost of, say, a bridge failure, is borne by not just the bridge builders but the people who might be driving on the bridge at the time of failure.
Thus society, and not just the individual paying for the work, has an interest in requiring that certain work is done competently.
It seems like a reasonable - it may be applied wrong -headedly or corruptly in places but for limited areas it seems entirely reasonable.
You could answer that argument but when you just label the argument "social engineer" it more like your engaging in this yourself by dismissing the argument without engaging it.
Is there any "reasonableness" to their position? You can decide for yourself. If you don't like the expression "social engineering," I'm perfectly happy with "Engineers manipulate public behaviour to solve the problem of how to be paid handsomely."
Whether that manipulation is in society's best interests is another argument, and yes I am avoiding it.*
* "Avoiding it" does not mean that I disagree with your point.
If a person were to say "engineers do an excellent job of educating the public concerning the need for their services to be regulated", well then the statement would skewed the other way - "Educate" is term with positive connotations.
Perhaps "engineer have pushed for the regulation of their field" would be close to neutral...
I don't know that the two are coupled in this manner. If I observe a politician making an election promise, is it only "manipulation" if he has no intention of attempting to fulfil his promise? What if he promises something and follows through with it? Is it manipulation if he personally doesn't care about the issue but is only doing it to get elected? What if he cares about some other issue, but promotes this issue to get elected so he can pursue another agenda he believes in?
I think the "validity" of influence is a very murky point to debate. There's what a politician believes, what a politician believes you believe, what they believe you might believe if told they believe it... Ultimately I find it easier to use the word "manipulate" to describe what happens when one person attempts to influence the behaviour of another for their own ends, whether I agree or disagree with those ends.
Getting away from politicians and back to regulated professions, Chiropractors and Doctors are both regulated professions. They seem to hate each other's practices. I believe each is sincere in arguing against the other, and I have a personal belief about the efficacy of one vs. the other, but I would also describe them both as attempting to manipulate public opinion about the other's profession.
I wouldn't say that one is manipulative and the other isn't purely because of my belief that one is right and that the other is wrong.
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?2664517-W...
This is the tale of an ex-pro cover band player finding himself out of work, and coming to grips with the realization that the amateurs are not to blame, after all.
But there are also people with track records at getting it right first time. Eventually the check signers (or the check signers bosses) work that out. (Hopefully before all the talented designers go broke.)
Reminds me a lot of this: http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/dear_gap_i_have_your_ne...
Ha! You're not looking hard enough. Check out the healthcare industry to find "Developer Challenges" where companies attempt to recruit programmers to compete for tiny prizes that won't even replace their lost billable time.
1. http://health2challenge.org/
The second example is the funniest, given that the $5000 challenge is intended to promote a platform developed with a $60 Million grant! Bill Gates was even on hand to help kick off the challenge.
Your existing business model is disappearing, and your cartel isn't going to stop it. Sucks for you.
(BTW, my wife is a graphic designer, so make of that what you will)
But I've been really disappointed by the huge backlash against these types of sites from the designers. There have been a few anti-99designs articles on HN recently and the attitude is like the massive IT outsourcing panics from a while back. The outsourcing came it changed some things but talented people still have jobs. Designers just have to realize the people working for free, or the outsourced design work, aren't their competition. It isn't work they are losing out on, rather it's work they would never have gotten because some people have small budgets, and that's fine. I think there is plenty of work for everyone without crapping on the design outsourcing (crowdsourcing) industry.
To put it in a more uncouth way, 99Designs and WooThemes take the pain-in-the-ass clients and get them out of the way. I don't see it as a bad thing. I just wish I had come up with the idea first.
Later on you can charge more if they want it personalised.
Then they came for the designer's business model, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a designer.
...
So I found a new one instead of bitching.
The most important and glaring difference that your abstraction completely ignores, is that the RIAA's audience is governments and their goal is to see laws enacted that will have wide ranging impact on music and computing.
Designers' audience is would-be customers and other designers. Their goal is educating customers on the difference between a $100 logo and an identity package that costs orders of magnitude more, and educating other designers on the impact of trying to compete with the $100 logo on price.
Designers have no cartel. They have no legal/lobbying arm. They've never controlled distribution or access. They've never been multiply convicted of illegal vertical integration and horizontal collusion. They aren't trying to see your rights legislated away to protect the comfortable industry monopoly they have never had.
No, it's not. It's changing-- just like programming.
Non-consultative design is eminently outsource-able. Many many businesses can thrive with a "good enough" logo or site theme from 99Designs or PageForest... Just like most businesses can thrive with Drupal or WordPress for most of their needs (supported by a $15/hr offshore developer) instead of hiring a programmer.
If you're a designer or a developer, your best protection is being good at solving Hard Problems(tm) that are Core to the Business.
A Bed and Breakfast will never hire an expensive resource for their logo or contact form. But they WILL buy nice mattresses and sheets.
A startup will go to great lengths to buy a crappy used desk on Craigslist for pennies, but will generally NOT skimp on developers or product design if they can help it.
The days of getting paid $95/hr for making something pretty or simple form/database work are coming to an end. But the opportunity for designer/developers who can demonstrably help sales/revenue are EXPLODING.
To me it looks like fail piled on top of fail.
If Skype manages to get a successful new GUI out of crowdsourcing then your argument might demonstrate some validity.
Your comparison is pretty shite. The RIAA is trying to maintain a cartel of middle-man promotional leverage. A call by designers to designers to not debase your professional leverage by giving your skills away for free is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Software design of all types, including UX, is an attempt to solve a problem given a set of constraints. There are thus three things involved: 1) solving, 2) the problem, and 3) the constraints.
Crowdsourcing solutions emphasizes the solving part while glossing over the problem and the constraints. Even if the "client" (in this case Skype) articulates the problem and the constraints clearly, why do we assume they are doing a good job of understanding what they want? As Einstein put it, we cannot solve a problem using the thinking that got us into it in the first place.
A big part of "creativity" is being able to redefine the problem or to play with the constraints in a novel way. This is not going to happen simply by submitting a solution to a different problem and expecting the client to say, "Aha! We were trying to solve the wrong problem!!" Humans being humans, you need to go through a process of discovery together and see if you can come up with new ways to reframe the existing problem. This cannot be done in a dictatorial fashion by the "client," nor can it be done in a dictatorial fashion by the designer, it must be done collaboratively.
Imagine Skype asked for keyboard bindings to make managing multiple chats easier. How would you go about submitting a design that used Kinect to implement a 3D gestural interface so that users could manage multiple conversations in 3D space using a different part of their brain to keep track of who is having each conversation?
This might not be a good idea, but if it was a good idea, you can't get there through a design competition, you get there through interviewing the Skype stakeholders and investigating what problem they're really trying to solve.
So coming back to this design competition, if I were a designer I would pass. Not because I'd be giving away my work for free, but because I wouldn't be able to do my best work, which consistes of investigating all the problem and the constraints before trying to solve the problem.
NOTE: This has nothing to do with free vs. expensive. A handsomely paid gig to design the best solution to the wrong problem is not interesting to me. I would trot out this exact same reasoning to a client that came to me with a "spec" or set of "requirements" and who offered to start paying me immediately to code a solution.
Spec work is a good way to quickly and cheaply solve a simple problem where top quality is not the primary concern.
Many problems (and I would agree that the Skype UI is one of these) are more complex and require a more specialised approach. The latter is where top designers spend all of their time anyway.
Design isn’t just a product, it’s also a process.
Thank you for articulating in nine words what took me eight paragraphs to fumble around.
And by no metrics did they simply weld it on at the end.
There are many many many factors involved in why Skype looks like it do and works like it does, but treating the design as something to be welded on at the end ain't one of them nor is not having a process.
+1!
If they did an excellent job, then they knew something that is not obvious from looking at the design competition, which is why I suggest that being involved in the full process is so important.
I think the numbers are something along the lines of this:
90% of users on Skype don't have much more than 5 contacts in their contact list.
95% of all messages are. "Can I call you?"
Another great example of Power User (us) vs 'The General Public'
If 95% of all messages are "Can I call you?" it seems like Skype should change around the default behavior for starting and acknowledging an incoming call. The ability for someone else to interact with my computer and make it suddenly start making noise "ringing" is a skeumorphism from when there weren't any other modes of communication available.
I will say that one thing the new Skype does that I'm sure benefits many users is the fact that the new Skype no longer loses windows (the video, the chat, contacts) behind other application. This is something that is addressed (maybe brutally) by the new version, but I think is still an improvement for the vast majority of users.
It's hard to separate cause and effect though, 95% of my messages are "Can I call you?", sometimes repeated 3-4 times, simply because the system often fails to reliably transmit anything longer without messages being lost, arriving out of order, etc. It is clearly hard to observe the users scientifically when the interface affects their behaviour.
Scenario you're implying was just perfectly implemented in Skype as it was, on a Mac at least.
I think probably every professional service field has this problem; there's a core transactional gig that most clients want and there's a series of services that consultants want to upsell alongside that gig. We have it in security, I know it exists in legal, it probably exists in accounting, too.
Likewise the designer gets to choose how much of the process they wish to be involved in. If the customer wants to do almost all of the work and simply bring in a designer to apply chrome, some designers do that, others demur and spend their time with customers who wish to collaborate on the full design life cycle.
It's a wonderful world full of choices to be made. So yes, we agree that it's ok for some customers not to employ designers to consult with them, and I hope we agree it's ok for some designers to pass on said customers.
There's millions of amateurs and pros moonlighting for extra cash all over the world, and they're all hungrier, cheaper, and want to work whether it's for fun or for money.
For every established designer who sneers at Skype's competition there'll be 1000 who submit and cross their fingers hoping a) their work reaches 10s of millions of people and b) Skype or others give them a job.
I think everyone can choose how they go on with their profession, so if you don't like contests, it's fine not participate in them. I've participated in contests and even won few, but usually they've been for some non-profit or small a startup looking for a sticker design.
The distinction here is that 1) I don't think Skype needs my help (they could hire anyone) 2) their contest is not about some funny sticker, but the UX of their core product 3) which leads to the fact that Skype doesn't take their UX seriously. Either they're willing to let anyone to design their core product without decent brief or experience with the problems and constrains or they're fishing for some ideas, which will not be implemented.
(Anyway I would be happy with a world of more designers since still most products are crap)
To many companies design and UX is something that anybody can do, especially software developers and managers/customers with strong opinions, so why hire somebody that does design/UX for a living? Also many other companies hire crappy designers with 2/3 mediocre websites in their portfolio and that are listing photography as their hobby -- for cheap.
The end result is something you can see for yourself -- lots of crappy designs and unusable apps out there.
And crowd-sourcing is the alternative to the above. But IMHO, a good designer is more valuable to user-facing applications than a good developer, and if you want your app to kick-ass, the designer must is a crucial part of the development process.
So it's nothing new really -- good designers will always be paid handsomely, bad designers will have to work harder -- isn't that the same thing happening with software developers?
The difference between doing a Skype redesign for a contest and doing it in a classroom or for a client is the experience. In the latter, you get constructive feedback - which you build upon over the years and directly makes you a professional.
A contest doesn't teach a designer anything and provides the wrong kind of feedback: reinforcing wishfulness over strategy, accuracy, and insight.
New designers have wishfulness in spades but lack the knowledge of how to turn it into a career. Experienced designers have learned the hard way that contests seem like a good idea but they're a terrible waste of time and emotion.
I say, if you are not an established designer with a large base of clients, do participate in the contest!
The rejection of contests has to do with wasting time on wishful thinking without even the minimum form of reward: constructive feedback.
Our advice is based on actual experience. What's yours?
keep in mind that you are *betraying the design community*,
and that *might harm you as designer* in the long run.
So, which is it?
You can sit and whine about it, or you can make sure that your product is so vastly better than the competition that anyone who knows better will pay for it.
We're already a step up the value chain from pure designers or pure web coders, but as long as there are more people willing to do the job than there are jobs, you'd better be good =)
What I do take issue with (Edit: and what it seems that others have taken issue with since I started writing this reply) is the following sentiment:
> "Such Design competitions are a disguised form of crowdsourcing, and are extremely insulting to the design profession."
Aside from the point that there's nothing 'disguised' about this being a crowdsourcing exercise, I've seen the similar view asserted around the place that designers should somehow be exempt from market forces. If you can't compete on price (which you can't if that price is free), then do what most of the designers that complain about this stuff can (or at least should be able to) compete on - quality and experience.
But you can. That's your job. You're a designer.
I have spent almost one hour reading all of your comments and replied to as many as I can. Needless to say, I don't expect everyone to agree with me. Actually, I was expecting quite the opposite, if the strong tone of the article is anything to go by.
Again, let me reiterate that I am NOT against design contests per se. I am against companies who take design lightly and try to patch stuff when things go astray. Do any of you think that changing the visual style of the chat pane will solve the several issues of the new UI?
Folks, this is a program used by millions of people, including computer un-savvy people who are having serious problems with the new UI. Forget logos, the problems here are functional first and foremost, and it is not a design contest that will solve them.
For those of you saying that this is a chance for young designers to get their name out in the world, allow me to tell you that there are hundreds of other ways to do that. Free or open source projects that need UI designers are not hard to come by.
Also, I am under 25, and by no means an old timer who is trying to spoil the party.
Cheers,
This happens to lots of markets, with similar complaints. It's certainly happened in photography, and the result is painful.. mostly for craftsmen in the middle of the talent & pay scale, who's overhead and value was frankly inflated by a rather narrow market channel and burden-to-entry.
Both disappeared, and the market corrected. Is it sad? Sure. It's a bummer to know that in some parts of the market hard-working people were replaced by flickr searches or microstock, but there's something beautiful about it also. Either way, it's inertia. It's what happens, and what's always happened.
I think the natural result can be a very positive one for the very talented. There's a sharp talent & value contrast this kind of shift causes. People in the middle need to move up or down and take advantage of the changes.
Adapt or die.
> There is no way in hell any company would launch an engineering or accounting competition.
Say what you mean.
"Playing the game" isn't going to lead to $0 for the 'winner' and Skype just rolling out the submission immediately. I'd be willing to be there would be some paid consultation between the 'winner' and Skype, although they probably won't commit to a specific winning $ amount up front.
I understand the basic argument of "they're getting our work for free!". Really, I do. But the notion that "hiring a professional UI designer to fix it" will cut it might not be correct.
First, they've paid people to come up with the current one, so simply paying people doesn't necessarily get the best results.
Second, Skype in particular is used by a huge number of people, all with various needs and experiences. Getting input from a broad range of people informed by their usage of Skype and other apps should yield a final product better than the mind of one "professional UI designer". Possibly not, but the odds are in favor of a crowdsourced approach coming up with something as good or better than pinning this all on one hand-picked by Skype with no input from the community.
http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/dear_gap_i_have_your_ne...
It was Skype's choice to put on this contest, and it should be assumed they know it is possible they won't get as quality a final product as possible. There are plenty of projects out there for quality designers to work on, and it bothers me that so many designers complain that free/cheap client work is such a pain in the community's ass.
Without a doubt, the type of client who wants to go that route is someone a designer of your talent wouldn't want to work with in the first place.
Right?
Oh, come off it. Too many designers become smug asses with an unwarranted sense of importance. Competitions like this are opportunities for those just starting to get their name out in the world. You're not going to be put out on the street because Skype held a public UI contest rather than hiring your firm.
It's sad to live in an era where someone who loves what he is doing for a living is called a "smug ass with an unwarranted sense of importance" ...
But that didn't happen. Instead, people did try it themselves and the market was flooded with extremely poor design. Before, not having a logo at all was the floor, the absolute minimum of branding. But after DTP, the floor was raised - having a poorly-designed logo that you did yourself was the new minimum. Today, crowdsourced logo that you paid $300 for is rapidly becoming the new minimum.
Nothing changes for designers, because there is no ceiling. Thinking of design in the very narrow, branding sense: it cannot be commodified, because whenever the minimum level is raised, it becomes ubiquitous and generic, and that creates the new zero point. Designers get paid to design things to stand out from what's ubiquitous, whatever that happens to be at the time.