The Dribbblisation of Design
insideintercom.io
insideintercom.io
That final layer of polish and execution is what gets you hired. If you don't have that, you get eliminated immediately. Nobody will ask about your process or your wireframes if your resume gets tossed in the trash bin. You'll never have a conversation about the organizational mission and how it relates to the product if you never get called back for an interview.
If you go in with Paul's first three steps (like I did) and you're lucky enough to talk to someone who doesn't eliminate based on that all-important fourth step of visual design, you'll find yourself in disagreement. There's 8,000 ways to build a product, and chances are your method simply won't line up with theirs.
Meanwhile, there's also 8,000 ways to make something look good, but all of those ways end up beautiful. It's hard to argue about solid visual design, even if it doesn't fit your particular style or tastes.
You can get away with subpar visual design skills at your own startup, like I did, but don't ever expect to get hired without developing those skills. They're more important than the other three combined.
The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design. They are not the same thing and often aren't done by the same person.
I've had fantastic UX designers who, frankly, can't get perfectly laid out pixel perfect work done or do eye candy. I've had UI/graphic designers who were awful at figuring out flow.
I've had people who are great at both. But one thing is certain, I want my products to be intuitive AND sexy because there is a certain subset of the market that will try your product just because it looks professionally designed and is on trend. There is a high overlap of those people with taste makers and I need those people using my product.
Instead we have designers adding lighting and depth to create gradients and shadows. Good golly, have you been to a modern airport recently? Sure form follows function, but there is absolutely no hesitation on the part of designers to degrade function to make things sexy unless you work in government.
Let's not pretend that the offline world isn't concerned with aesthetics any less than the online one is.
They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the departure gates, presumably on the assumption that they are not" – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul
(In all honesty, I suspect I'm guilty of producing several websites that could easily be accused of those same faults – though I don't _think_ I've ever accidentally sent anyone to Murmansk…)
I can see that.
What I got from the author is that "sexy" should be emergent and not fundamental.
I'm pretty sure "UX" was created as a term in response to the market getting flooded with stylists (interested amateurs) calling themselves "designers". I'm interested to see what you believe to be the distinction between "visual design" and "graphic design". Traditionally, Graphic design is about how it works, with how it looks (what you call "eye candy") being secondary to (but still a part of) function. This is the sort of thing you can learn if you read books instead of just reading blog posts.
And clearly, the definition of "graphic design" has been watered down to the point of irrelevance, and replaced with "UX". sure, fine call yourself whatever you want. But what makes you think UX won't get similarly watered down? The problem isn't the word itself, it's that the culture as a whole doesn't value design, including "designers". (in your language, the culture doesn't value "UX")
Of course language is designed* by its users, and for the moment, it seems that we have indeed fully rotated our hierarchy words a notch down over the past 20 years. But please let us not be ignorant of history, and tradition, and what "graphic design" actually is (Or at least.. .used to be) and that the whole totem pole of design and designers is sliding on a downward trajectory. (I blame adobe for making it look easy. you could always look more convincingly like a skilled professional while operating a huge desk sized typesetting machine and laying out magazines by hand with paper, exacto blades, and photographic color separations)
But sure, maybe inventing new wank words will prop up our careers for 5 more years. It's good marketing. it's good design, to invent words, to sell ourselves. Inventing a new word for "design" is a very designery thing to do. You can make design seem interesting and exciting again by giving it a new flashy buzzword. That will only take you so far though, until the novelty wears off, and suddenly you find everyone believes "UX" means "interested amateur who can make eye candy in photoshop" again.
* see what I did there? "Design" being used to denote the decisions involved in how something works and is experienced, with no reference to how anything looks. Imagine that.
I got lost around "wank word" and UX being the "Web 2.0 of the design world." Most UX people I know are focused on user research, usability, information architecture, and interaction design. I'd say maybe, 1 in 5 are visual designers, and maybe 1 in 3 have any passable graphic design skill at all.
Maybe you're saying that people will be just called "user researcher", "information architect", etc etc and not use the word UX. But I think "wank word" is a tad inaccurate.
I think designers are getting worse and worse at doing one aspect of design and so they ignore it and latch onto a term that purposefully disregards that aspect. So a UX designer would scoff at the visual design aspect because that's not part of their job.
In most cases, outside of huge companies, a designer does pretty much every aspect of what most people consider to be design; visual, UX, UI, Information architecture, research, and branding. That's what designers are trained to do, that's the point of being a designer, you NEED to know how to do all of these things in order to call yourself a designer.
Most people in hiring positions couldn't give two shits that a designer is supposed to do more than just make things pretty- And so they hire people who call themselves "designers" that actually are little more than glorified photoshop operators. Why? because these "designers" are cheaper than these other "designers" and it's not obvious why. The amateurs undercut the professionals.
This puts the real designers, the ones with educations, that actually know design principles, typography, psychology, etc, and have years of experience- in the difficult situation of having to distinguish themselves from these interested amateurs- these "stylists". So I believe, in a turn of marketing genius, some designers came up with the term "UX", and insist that it is NOT this lowly "design" thing, as you know it. It's this totally different thing that is /more/ than just making things look pretty.
Even though, all the things under the "UX" banner are familiar to people with design educations as "design".
That's what "Design" is. UX is just "Design". These are the normal things that you have to do to make a design work.
But how do you communicate that? How do you communicate that Javascript and HTML are capable of so much more now, than they were 5 years ago? You come up with a buzz word. Ajax. Web 2.0. HTML5. To experts who actually know their craft, these are obvious wank words. Meaningless checkboxes that accountants and recruiters can look for on resumes, designed to repackage skills that are decades old as something new and exciting.
But this is hacker news. We shouldn't have to use bullshit marketing terms here. That's for recruiters. That's for clients. Cut the shit, I say. Use the real words with their real meanings.
UX is an umrbella term[1] for usability related disciplines; it's recent conflation as a buzz-word has led to the misinterpretation of it's original meaning.
>UX won't get similarly watered down?
It already has been seeing as how no one seems to know what it means.
[1] http://www.interaction-design.org/images/encyclopedia/human_...
And incidentally what on earth is HCI, Human Factors, and Industrial design doing all disjoint? they should all overlap.
"Graphic design is a creative process between a client and a designer, traditionally completed in conjunction with producers of form (printers, sign makers, programmers etc.). Graphic design is created to convey a specific message (or messages) to a targeted audience. The field is also often referred to as Visual Communication or Communication Design. Graphic designers use various methods to create and combine words, symbols, and images to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use a combination of typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to produce a final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated. Common uses of graphic design include identity (logos and branding), publications (magazines, newspapers and books), print advertisements, posters, billboards, website graphics and elements, signs and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as images, shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design, especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements."
It seems to me graphic design is more about the visual appearance than "how it works." I've read a fair amount of books on interaction, product, and visual design and have never read that graphic design had been all of those things.
I've worked at companies where you have people working specifically on either interaction design, visual design, motion design, or user research. All of them were contributing to how it works and how it looks, and had distinct jobs (although they worked closely together).
Also, Human-Computer Interaction is a field that is newer than graphic design, and touches more on just visual design, so I'm not really sure why you are pushing this idea that graphic design = UX/interaction/product design.
The point I am making is "Design" is how it works. Graphic design is the design of printed, or visual communications. Graphic from the Greek Graphos, for "writing". That is, how the written communication works. To go from that to conclude that "Oh graphic design is just how it looks then" doesn't make any sense, and demonstrates a very shallow understanding of what it actually involves.
Furthermore, with graphic design along with any design process- the most important thing you learn is the process. The process of research, iteration, prototyping, throwing out most of your ideas, starting again and again and refining, and learning- all towards the goal of solving a specific problem.
That is all design. Not just graphic design. To go from there to "Oh but this guy can do some neat looking bevels in photoshop", it really just blows my mind, how amazingly dismissive and disrespectful such a view point is.
That Human-Computer interaction is "new" is really just way to hype it up. There is absolutely nothing new about the process of achieving a good HCI design, because it's the same principles from graphic design, typography, and industrial design all over again, simply applied to this new medium. There is nothing special or unique about it, except that you can get a faster turnaround time on prototypes.
It's not surprising that designers specialise, and all contribute to how it works. But it's like a british tank. All the soldiers in the tank are trained to do each other's jobs, so they can take over if required. They are all "Designers".
If you want to argue that designers should be knowledgable about all aspects of product design, I agree. But graphic design != interaction or product design.
The present ultra-competitive world optimizes some things but neglects others.
Sure the developer cares but the client does not care whatsoever.
Similarly the designer cares about sticking to product design and making the problem easier. However the manager wants something that looks pretty, something that looks expensive and nice to use.
EDIT: I would also like to add I agree with this sentiment. We want pretty apps. I think the time for functional apps was when the iOS and Android markets first came out and touching things on your screen to do something was foreign. Now just like iOS7, it's time to take the steering wheels off.
This is akin to the web during the '90s and early 2000 era.
First, most of these redesigns are done in good fun, as a thought exercise for the designer. New thinking applied to familiar context.
But secondly, it's so important to understand that all brands and interfaces are ultimately judged by your customers, who have "no knowledge of [or patience for] the requirements, constraints, organisational politics." I've just heard that argument way too often used to prop up a poor design outcome. Good design remembers that the context of your product is in the hands of your consumer, not in the conference room of your headquarters.
If someone outside your company offers some free thoughts on your brand and identity, it's not a bad idea to look them over. They are relating to you as a customer. (And usually, a huge promoter.)
Designers can only aim to produce work that challenges "constraints, organisational politics" if the client will allow them to. Very few will. You can explain until you're blue in the face that they're shooting themselves in the foot, but in any organization the easiest and safest thing to do career-wise is to avoid rocking the boat, so very few clients are willing to push back on all the different internal pressures that hobble their projects. It's easier to just accept them and deliver the best thing their internal dysfunctions will allow.
(This is as true for consulting coders as it is for consulting designers, btw. Even the original consultant, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, could never get the London police to take his word for things.)
And it's easier for designers to go along with that too than it is to refuse to work for clients who insist on shooting themselves in the foot. But it's hard to blame them. Designers gotta eat too, you know? I mean, you can play Howard Roark and refuse to work on anything that's in any way compromised, but since reality isn't a bad novel you may find yourself going your whole life without ever finding a client who meets your standards. And is a brilliant designer who never got around to designing anything really better in the final analysis than a brilliant designer who designed a bunch of nearly-great-but-sadly-compromised things? I dunno.
You can't represent the customer without doing some real research with real customers. I can't remember ever seeing those sorts of results in a spec redesign post.
Instead, I think they are using the brand as a canvas to show off their own abilities. And they always pick a big popular brand, because then they can leverage that popularity to promote their work.
Teensy bit bland for my tastes but it goes to show there are designer out there who do some quality redesigns.
" … but work that doesn’t address real business goals, solve real problems people have every day, or take a full business ecosystem into consideration. "
That's a conversation I have almost every day with clients, designers, co-workers, and friends.
"Pixel pushing" visual design is something that some people are very highly skilled at – and the difference between good visual design and bad visual design is obvious even to those of us without the skills to create "good design", _BUT_, in terms of a product or web project it's the last ~20% of the time/money budget. Unless you've got (in the article's terms) the "Mission" and "Vision" properly articulated, and then the "Outcome", "Structure", and "Interaction" properly thought through, you don't really have enough actionable data or goals to appropriately brief a visual designer.
(Having said that, for some businesses and budgets, choosing "existing artwork" and jamming your businesses specific requirements into it might be the right way to go - the same way as most retail stores don't build spaces like Apple Stores, but make compromises based on what's available for rent in the area they want to trade, then "making do" with the space/architecture they end up with. I've helped many clients build inexpensive websites by articulating the solutions to the business problems, then cutting costs by choosing something off somewhere like ThemeForest that's "close enough" and either living with the deficiencys or bodging/hacking over them like a quick paintjob instead of a major shop refitout…)
I wonder if there'd be an opportunity for a Dribbble-like site to showcase your "business goal articulation" or "optimised interaction flow"? I'm guessing not – partly because I don't think nearly as many people do that work for "fun" (in the way that many people _do_ create polished final renderings as an art/pastime), but mostly because I suspect there's significantly more business value in them – I'd expect to see that sort of higher-level business-strategic work showcased as whitepapers on a Digital Agency's website (or locked away behind NDAs or contractual/provacy agreements with the clients).
On a quick glance though, it's not quite what I was imagining, it's still _mostly_ focused on the final visuals. I was imagining something which'd stop well short of that (or at least downplay the final graphic styling), and instead highlight the problem discovery and solution process, the business goal articulation, the interaction design – perhaps everything upto the brief you'd then give to a designer. That'd fascinate me (but as I said upthread, that's quite probably considered significantly more valuable business intelligence or intellectual property by the people who're good at it than even highly polished visual designs – that's the stuff that makes a Razorfish or Mule Design job worth mid six figures, and why they're not competing with $5k or $25k "web design" firms).
When a potential client contacts me on Dribbble, I usually send them samples of my "real" work so they can get a better idea of what they will be getting from me.
I used Forrst for a while, and some people posted design processes there. However, people are naturally drawn to eye candies more. Like others have mentioned, Behance is another option.
Right now, the evaluation and hiring process for designers in most companies is so shallow that cranking out eye-catching niblets is a HIGHLY rational move for designers looking to promote themselves.
Your logo looks good. Visually, it's fine...
But what's the point of having dual colored shapes? Why is there a circle behind the antennas? What does the robot represent? Why orange? If you showed the logo to someone, would they be able to think of a word that coincides with a goal/mission of your company? Why is it looking down? If you're looking to predict (keywords: future, time, ready, etc.) then why not make it look forward?
These are the types of questions that struck me first looking at the logo. It feels like there was more focus on how it looked than to what it represents. That's how Dribble designs feel.
They look good and they get the job done (i.e. you have a logo, a client gets a site, etc.), but when you combine functionality with design, that's a real home run.
Using logo design as the example, the first goal of the designer should be to understand the company. What does it want to do? Why does it exist? Like a person, you want to get to know it before you can label it. Once you have the part of what you want to symbolize, what you want to communicate, you can start sketching. Start trying to really capture the soul of the company and present it in an aesthetic and still functional way.
Having aesthetics without much focus on function, that's what I feel the author is categorizing Dribble designers as.
Having functionality without aesthetic, well, we'll use an automobile for that example. A functional without aesthetic car would be a garbage truck.
Having aesthetics and function, you get brands like Porsche, Apple, Lego, OXO...
Sorry for going on a rant using your logo :-)
Though a jeep looks great and is iconic. I'd argue that's because it doesn't have aesthetic applied but that it emerges from purely functional design (and by comparison off-road styling of city cars always looks lame). There are loads of examples of functional 'ugly' things that are yet design classics - e.g. adjustable wrench, Leica M6, Brompton folding bike, yellow school bus, band-aid, Lego, paperclip.
However, in my case, there was actually a lot more thought about the feel I wanted to the logo to project than you give us credit for. My company is about making predictive modeling easy, for people who are non-programmers. I wanted a look that was friendly, accessible, futuristic and high tech. I did spend a long time explaining to Ty Wilkins, my designer, what my business was about, and the feel I wanted to project.
We eventually decided that's we go with a mid-century "Tomorrowland" version of futuristic, as a way of combining the friendly with futuristic. The robot came out of that line of work. Since 50's robots were intelligent, it gets at prediction.
I think if you showed it to people they would come up with words like friendly. Eventually, I changed the name of the website to be Predictobot, to have a stronger tie in with the logo.
I did try hard not to be a back seat designer, since that's why I was hiring Ty. So the overall form of the robot is entirely his. The circle behind the antennas is to echo the '50's TV antennas. The orange is a warmer, friendlier color than more typical logo blues and greens.
So maybe I'm being naive, but I do think that we went through a good process of thought, that led to a solution that fit the brief. It wasn't just "give me something that looks good".
People do seem to connect with it. I don't hand out a single business card without getting a comment on how they like my logo. It represents what I wanted to project for my one person business. And I found Ty on Dribbble ;-).
It especially concerns the application section of Predictobot: current logo will be too distracting.
Compare a few pages with similar layout to yours, note they all use more schematic logos that draw less attention to header: https://www.getsentry.com/, http://www.fiftythree.com/paper, even http://insideintercom.io/
http://www.docker.io/ is interesting: their logo looks good in ‘hero unit’ as it has the detail, and at the same time not bad in header because of more or less simple shape and not much contrast. (For favicon they've simplified it somewhat.)
> people say designers should code. Whether you agree with that or not, designers certainly need to define the problem and solution not in pixels, but in terms of describing what happens between components in a system ( http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/)
My job isn't to make things pretty. Rather, it's to make things understandable. Only when aesthetic appeal makes something easier-to-use & understand does it make sense for me to incorporate it into my design.
In other words: A good designer won't just polish a turd.
This is so true. It's way to easy to get lost in creating beautiful designs, oohing and ahhing at little neat interactions, etc. But if it's not fulfilling the initial goal of what you're trying to accomplish it's sadly a waste of time and resources. That's not to say you can't accomplish both (beautiful design that also meets the goals of the app) - but it's a lot harder than it sounds. And very easy to get derailed. Setting up some periodic checkpoints along the way to keep checking back that you're still on target can definitely help.
Dribbble is purely for showcasing visual design (aka technical implementation). It's the price of admission for being a designer. Dribbble isn't for, nor should it be for, explaining UX decisions.
User experience design and interaction design are different skill sets within the design discipline.
If you are impressed with someone's dribbble, then arrange for a phone interview or an in-person white boarding session.
Design is problem solving just like engineering, just a different type of problem set. Treat it as such.
I recently started using dribbble and thought, "I wish there was more detail in how they came to that conclusion regarding design, layout, and some information architecture". There have few who actually do, but was dribbble founded with the OP main concern in mind? I have a background in research from working in a Research Lab, IT, and project management. Now I'm starting my career in UXD and UD. From my perspective it helps to start with a wireframe, documenting a sitemap, interview the clients, hell even have a case study (this one is usually over looked), call-to-actions, purpose of the created User Experience. I've met with a couple senior UXD people in the field (who are nice as well, btw) and always say mention people always are trapped in the color schemes, wow factor, and forget that main question: "Who is your user?".
"Design" seems to be evolving from pure aesthetics (what's the first emotion evoked upon sight) to aesthetics+function (what's the first reaction, and how does this affect my audience). Maybe it's because 10 years ago "designer" was purely synonymous with fashion or pure photoshop/illustrator. Now it seems to represent anyone and everyone from graphics/visuals, to interaction and information, and even just product.
It makes me wonder though, if there were a dribbble of site flows, wireframes, and creative call-to-actions, would people flock to it?
This article offers many solid advice for that talented albino sasquatch designer looking to differentiate himself in his job application for a well-funded start up.
But for the rest of us monkeys, having an extremely solid looking visual design skill (even at the expense of being a bit too trendy) will serve us well. These days, I have to go through about 30 resumes to see 1 that has fairly good design skill, and still not Dribbbbbble level.
Maybe he wants someone who is versed in UI and UXD?
I don't see this article as any different than the misuse of Hadoop article that was posted yesterday.
Perhaps gross generalisation is a fitting term? Basically it's somewhat insulting to insinuate that designers on Dribbble believe glamour shots are the be-all and end-all of design. I've heard several prominent Dribbblers interviewed on various web design podcasts, they know what it is and what it isn't.
>> To me it looks like the design world...
Whoah there, you can judge the collective opinion of 'the design world' from your desk?! :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
you're a little bit off: everyone thinks they are shit at what they do, but great at what anybody else does
The problem with this I see is that non-design people who wants to hire designers think that Dribbble is the "go to" standard of design, without thinking of usability problems their product[s] have that needs solving.
I think Dribbble is somewhat a victim of success; everyone wants in and uses it as they see fit.
This, too, shall pass.
At a higher level, having a vision, a framework, a filter by which you make choices and solve problems makes the whole process of doing these things easier.
Referenced in the notes. Very useful.
I can only hope that Apple will learn the error of their ways and turn back to function over form.
Is he using the word 'web' instead of 'Internet'? Does anyone know of the web moving into our clothes?
When people talk about clothes on the web, it's nonsense because they probably don't run HTTP.
The web is content, the net is machinery.
When you are on Xbox and playing against someone else, you are playing over the internet but you are not playing over the web. Similarly, you can download web pages but you cannot download the internet.
I have web-enabled weighing scales, web enabled radio, web enabled security cameras. If they were to use a different protocol (e.g. FTP) it would not be 'web'.
1/ People are not going to post briefs,diagrams, or product strategies of their clients. No business want these informations to be public. It's like sharing the source code of some proprietary app. Even during an interview you dont do that.
2/ Dribble is for static assets , png ,final results that can be made public, not some hidden documents on the why of the what.
3/ Redesign as an exercice is good,it is not art nor restyling. You have constraints set by the product it self.
4/ Yes, Dribbble is basically a showcase and an inspiration tool for designers ,there is nothing wrong with that.
It's not unlike posting a snippet of cool JS/CSS/whatever on HN and showcasing it. Yes it's not practical but it COULD be inspirational.
One reason why fashion shows exist is to give trickle inspiration to other fashion designers, not to be an exercise in practicality.