The Dribbblisation of Design (2014)

The Dribbblisation of Design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10626942 - Nov 2015 (51 comments)

The Dribbblisation of Design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6406898 - Sept 2013 (101 comments)

The writer appears to assume that the site should have case studies framing the problem and the solution. How is that possible when these are largely made up designs, and the real work is covered by NDA? Most "shots" on Dribbble are one or two small screenshots showing scenarios familiar to viewers, like booking a vacation home, streaming music, etc. They're tweaking an existing use case, not reinventing the wheel. It doesn't need a case study.

YC talks about founders "playing house." They rent an office. They hire some of their buddies. They get all the trappings of a business, but there's no actual business.

There's no actual goal, other than "start a business," and no one has answered the only other question that really matters in business: How are we going to make money? (The first question is "What problem are we solving?" and the second is "How will we make money from solving it?")

The whys and wherefores he says should be the norm for what you talk about amounts to sharing your secret sauce. No, you don't want to really be sharing that casually online to make chitchat in a space like Dribbble. Of course it's going to focus on the most superficial part of the process.

The same thing happens in GIS when the people making the maps are not the people who need the maps. You end up with a "map shop" and you end up with people trying to prettify the maps because making the maps is all they do.

A good map will tend to be described by people as beautiful but a beautiful map isn't necessarily a good map. A good map is beautiful in an engineer's aesthetic -- an elegant design that flows well because flowing well is part of what makes it work well. A map made beautiful for the sake of beauty because printing the map is the only role you have tends to fail at being a highly useful, well-designed map.

In community development or place making work, it is well known that "beautiful" places tend to be more prosperous. So some people think you make a place prosperous by making it beautiful, though I have yet to personally see anything that genuinely pins down the exact relationship between "beauty" and prosperity and I am very skeptical that simply prettifying the place actually makes it more prosperous.

I suspect this works more like good maps: Good places tend to look good to the human mind but looking good doesn't, per se, make for a good place.

It's vastly easier to start an article by finding a hook like this and probably a good way to connect to an audience. It's much more challenging to write "Here is an excellent design process" and give it a title the world will find interesting and want to click into.

This article is well worth the read even if you don't give a darn about Dribbble or the hook that inspired its creation. It's been written by someone who knows how to make things actually happen and recognizes superficial BS when they see it and can tell you what the correct and meaty process looks like.

It's just hard to get started writing about the correct and meaty process without some jumping off point and it's hugely hard to write good titles for such.

But this is a don't miss article if you have any interest in what good design is all about.