Good Design vs. Great Design | Hacker News Reader

Good Design vs. Great Design

andy.works

36 pointsgymshoes24 comments

Strange figurative wording aside, I think the author is reiterating that, in order to go "above and beyond" and stand out from the competition, you have to create something novel and radical. And directed more towards art and creative fields.

"Good design" is following all the classic design tips. Like a material website that implements material design correctly, is good design. And this is actually OK and better than "great design" for most situations.

"Great design" needs to stand out. And the only way to stand out is to do something weird. Take some fancy website made out of ASCII: not something you should write your IT software in, but maybe good for a portfolio.

Radical "great design" is really good for art and music: almost nobody cares about a beautiful portrait, people want something strange and creative. It's really bad for software architecture "design": when writing code, you practically never want to stray from the obvious, traditional path. For UX design and websites it's somewhere in the middle, and depends on what the software is for (e.g. business solution UX is less creative, video game is more creative UX).

I think the author is confusing art and design. Art is all the things he says are great: challenging, messy, unconvential, etc. etc. But design in a lot of ways is more about empathy and engineering. Someone wants to do something and you're figuring out how to make that as understandable and efficient as possible. You don't need to be super creative to make a great design, you need to understand what the person is trying to do and make solving that as obvious as possible. IMO this guy wants "design" to be Art, and that's just confusing most of the time.

If I'm downloading some app it's probably because I need it to do something. I don't give a shit about the designer's ego, I do not need my mind blown, I just want to do the thing I set out to do and move on with my life.

The problem with most design is everyone thinks they're the next incarnation of Steve Jobs and if they just get rid of more buttons and make their typography really really nice everyone will see their creative genius. So we're constantly dealing with apps and their "bold" redesigns of things that everyone understood perfectly fine before. It's incredibly frustrating. Even reading what this guy is doing on his site, it's like reinventing all the built in apps that work fine with "Bold" new versions. Yeah, I don't really need a bold new calculator or weather app.

Art is about oneself. Design is about others.

As a graphic designer myself, most (if not all) of the colleagues I've ever met want to feel sometimes like they're artists. Since I've working for the web even before I was studying graphic design at uni I never could understand why is that goal.

I don't think this is a "Steve Jobs" thing, Jobs wasn't even a designer nor programmer but a marketeer, and a successful one. It comes way before than him, and it reaches all branches of graphic design - until at the end of the day you remember you're trying to communicate something to _someone else_.

TL; DR [without the labels]

  is usable.            challenges.
  solves problems.      enriches the soul.
  functional.           is fulfilling.
  is invisible.         is in your face.
  is good process.      is usually messy.
  is familiar.          is uncomfortable.
  optimizes.            discovers.
  is consistent.        is unexpected.
  follows patterns.     sets the new patterns.
  is understandable.    opens new vistas.
  is clear.             leaves room for interpretation.
  gets out of the way.  has something to say.
  is for all.           is for you.

You can decide for yourself which is better.

A few of the ones of the right could be an evolution of the ones on the left (functional and fullfilling, solves problems and enriches the soul, is for all and is for you), some others are terrible (is in your face, usually messy, uncomfortable).

Things are messy, uncomfortable and "in your face" because that is how we relate to them, not because it's inherently in their nature. That is important, because among other attributes, those three have a strong tendency to wane with familiarity and over time.

To give two examples, sharing opinions and pieces of your life online was generally a confusing concept 15 years ago. Now it is considered a virtue by many and an important part of distinguishing oneself from their peers (or even a career in itself). Another one is new music being uncomfortable (although, of course, people would rather claim it's "bad") and in your face and that sentiment being shared by the majority. Until it "suddenly" isn't. Not because the music changed – it's a recording after all, frozen in time – but because it has changed us.

These are good to consider together. The trend and example that comes to mind is the 'design' of the tech in the movie 'Her'. Even with our current mobile devices there's more gestures and voice so that the 'design' elements fade into the background.

I prefer good design.

I thought this was just a snarky response until I read the article, but yes - based on TFA's description, I'll take "good" any day.

Great design is design that stays good even after fullfilling all the list from the "great". But most design fail at that, and thus are not good anymore.

I'll buy good design for my business and clients, but I'll buy great design for my home.

Interface design has a utilitarian purpose, it's not "art", it's like a hammer, a handy tool to complete a task. However, some designers think they are "artists" and they need to "stand out" from the crowd and get some "design" award. Making good tools that help people with their life is a fulfilling pursuit in itself. Don't torment your users with "great design".

I actually have a lot of criticism for their designs, but I’m going to hold my tongue since they make a calculator app for the iPad and don’t charge money for its or feature creep their way from calculator into social media.

Edit.

Whoops. I spoke too soon.

I downloaded the app, and it says I have a week to decide if I want to pay 14$ a month for it.

A month! For a calculator app!

great design challenges you... to pay $14 a month for a calculator app :^)

His apps are badly designed wrapped up in loud visual design that’s trying to do / say too much.

Just adding 3d doesn’t mean you’ve stumbled upon a new era of interface design.

Good design is getting hired by Google in 2021. Great design is choosing to work for Google in 1998.

The "great" side is very vague - it's hard to tell what the author is trying to say.

As a designer, I find stuff like this embarrassing, snakeoil-y and insipid. yuck

According to author - Great design describes how to market our failures.

The navbar is suboptimal. Having a transparent background makes it so black things scrolling by obscure the logo for instance.

Great design sounds awful

Great design is the sign of the perfectionist. Good design is about shipping product.

Did he replaced good for great by mistake?

Good design is Heaven

Great design is Hell

Reply on news.ycombinator.com