Design culture is a frozen shithole | Hacker News Reader

Design culture is a frozen shithole

blog.colepeters.com

93 pointsjonphillips0641 comments

I've had similar frustrations, but I've started to understand it as a matter of visibility bias. There are lots of people out there, doing the good work, doing it well, for the right reasons, in the right ways, without buzzwordy bullshit. But you don't hear about them because... they're working. They aren't promoting themselves. They're just working. It's the asshats who don't know what they are doing, don't have their skills in constant, 100% demand, don't have work to do, that have the time to promote themselves like this.

I've been on a PR bent for the last 6 months. It's a slog. If I don't treat it like a full-time job when I do it, it doesn't go anywhere. And that means my other work suffers. You can't be in two places at one time.

I sometimes rail against the larger market of "DIY" and "Makers" and "Creatives". Most people who would call themselves a "maker" are in-name only. People who actually make things call themselves “postal worker” or "teacher" or "accountant". In other words, we make things as a matter of course and don't use it as a status symbol, as a component of our identity that we need to broadcast to others.

I think it's the same way with Design. There is design in everything we do. "Design" is nothing more than the human condition: impacting upon the environment through your will, through your intention. At least it is to me. If I think of any way that design is different than a monkey throwing shit on the wall, it's intention. Agency. And every man and woman has that. So to call someone a "designer" is a null statement. Designer of what? And how? For whom? And most importantly, by what set of values?

So keep working, and don't let the TEDx asshats get you down.

I'd love to know more companies that are doing good work, can you (or anyone else) list some startups/employers that are working on "real" problems, but may not be well known?

Personally, I'm a freelancer.

Don't ignore the public sector. Not everything is as bad as working for Raytheon on war industry projects, or working for Health and Human Services on disease industry projects. My experience has been: the more local, the better. There are some municipal IT departments that are trying to do good work and support open standards at the same time, in a realistic environment. I think it's a burgeoning area where more young people could turn their attention.

There are a lot of small manufacturers across the country (don't believe what you've heard, it's only gigantocorp manufacturing that is dead in America, and that's more because gigantocorps are on the way out than anything to do with manufacturing) that have very good, results-based attitudes to work. My current client is one such place. They essentially give me free reign over their project.

But ultimately, I think a person can do good work in any environment. Though you probably want to stay out of the boiler-rooms of anything that is closely ran by someone with an MBA. When you hear them start to talk about "our employees are our greatest asset", then you know they doth protest too much. Why would you want to be considered an "asset" anyway, which is by definition owned property? Stick to places that are pragmatic, open, and honest.

What makes you think gigantocorps are on their way out?

Starting with the assumption that centralized system are generally wasteful compared to decentralized systems [1]: Why does middle-management exist? As a class of worker, I mean. They are a vast body of employees who do nothing directly towards consuming input resources and transforming them into output products and services. They exist solely to organize the people who do real work into a large, hierarchical organization. But to what end?

From a labor and trade perspective, the most efficient transaction is Person A making a thing and Person B buying it directly from Person A. There is no additional overhead of management, transportation, holding stock in display rooms, etc. But it's impossible to make those sorts of connections on the daily, hourly, minutely basis necessary to make an economy flow.

The best answer I've ever gotten was "it's more efficient!" So we've been told, but has anyone checked? And to which, the best answer I've ever received was, "well, it hasn't been disproven." Because of the key role of distribution in an economy, we accept these other inefficiencies.

But is that absolute? I think we are seeing proto-elements of decentralized distribution in sites like Etsy (which serves only to connect producers to customers) and Amazon (which both connects trading entities and performs stock warehousing and shipping for them, but doesn't actually produce anything of their own). We are only now entering an era of eCommerce. Everything before now has been "commerce as it has been since the industrial revolution" just on the Internet.

[1] and I do acknowledge that it is an assumption. But I think it's a stronger position than "bigger is better".

Anyone in your office put together a spreadsheet? Then they are a designer. Anyone else send out a mail shot to some customer base? Then they are a designer. Design is not sexy. It is interesting, but it's not sexy.

"don't let the TEDx asshats get you down" yes!

"There was once a time when design was a vehicle for social change, for political disruption, for speaking up and giving a big “fuck you” to the status quo."

I'm tempted to just say "no there wasn't." There were good designs during times of social change. Feels that this is a general "rising tide lifts all boats" situation, though. Probably more accurate to say survivor bias.

That is, I find it hard to believe that the "designs" truly facilitated these changes, so much as they helped what was already moving. Think of it as the coefficient of friction for moving bodies. The designs and such are enough to overcome the kinetic values, but not static ones.

I agree, but I think what he's trying to get at is that designers were more politically engaged on the whole, especially during Modernism. However, it also had its downsides, the major being design hubris (e.g. over-planned cities, complete top-down organizational thinking, treating all people interchangeably, etc).

Right, and that is almost exactly survivor bias. It isn't that they were more engaged as a whole. The ones that we talk about were.

Ehhh, yeah, sort of.

There were far less people who could call themselves designers at the time. It was a slower craft and took more training.

It's like in music. Yeah, there were other bands other than the Beatles and Rolling Stones, but it was harder to produce and distribute music back then. Thus, the industry was more monolithic than it is now. The ones we talk about now are more representative of the state of the industry back then than Lady Gaga (or whatever) is of now.

There may have been less people that would call themselves designers, but I would wager it is still larger than the body of folks you and this link have in mind.

Further, and here is where it is exactly survivor bias. You have to show that there weren't other people trying to be designers. That the ones you are focusing on are the ones that were successfully doing it, is what makes it survivor bias.

John Heartfield? I suppose that falls into your 'design during social change' category.

And the survivor bias. Do you really think there were no other folks doing design work back then? Remember, the claim is that design as a whole was more instrumental in social change and whatnot.

For that to be true, every other person doing design back then would have had to have been just as political.

Fair enough, I can't win that one given the huge amount of material produced in commercial print over the last century.

A few more survivors: John Gutmann, Tom Harrison, Humphrey Spender, Lee Miller.

Thanks for this. Design trends really are detached from any sensible reality. They're turning good designs into bad designs whenever a site tries to modernize themselves to match these trends.

Here's my rule for web app design: 90% of the page, by area, should be somehow derived from the app's dynamic content, versus static filler content from the designer, no matter how pretty the filler is.

Second rule: Designers, stop calling your OWN apps sexy or beautiful. Would you walk up to someone that you just met, and tell them that you're beautiful while they're looking directly at you? What the f## are you designers thinking?

This would be a lot more convincing if it explained exactly what is wrong with the designs he dismisses and even more so if it offered a few examples of the kind of design he'd like to see instead.

I was waiting for when he was going to put in some clear examples about what he was talking about. It's easy to say, "This sucks, we need to do better!" when you don't really lay out specific examples.

Worse still, he starts with "design needs to stop with the feel-good bullshit", but ends with a bunch of save-the-world feel-good bullshit.

The fact that Silicon Valley has not solved the world's problems goes far far deeper than design, we're talking about fundamental problems of shareholder driven, Tayloristic style capitalism.

The designs he dismisses are props.

Citing specific details would be begging for an immediate derailment directly into the sort details that are directly opposed to the larger point:

>'We don’t need more superficial solutions to superficial problems. We need real answers to real problems — big ones and small ones.

As someone with a formal design education and a uhh "technologist", I think this argument is pure crap. You're looking at "designers" in tech and making a very valid critique of the industry at large, but these designers have very little to do with it. Yes, they're pumping out derivative cloying work like every start up does because that's what they get paid to do. I think you might need to step out of the tech bubble before throwing stones at others for sitting in it.

Most of the designers I know aren't in tech (mostly so they can have autonomy and greater impact, slightly less to do with finding it wholly un-interesting and trivial) and your whole critique just doesn't seem to hold water for them.

I agree, I simply replaced "design" with "interface design" and everything makes sense.

Replace "design" with "startups".

He is describing the culture of creating business's whose real purpose is to attract VC funding with the goal of finding an 'exit'.

Wait, why are we attacking flat buttons, rounded borders, and non-gradient backgrounds when it's the incestuous nature of ideas in the Valley that's really the problem. I mean, in the article, the guy spends time at the beginning puking flat-rainbows, then goes on (much later) to say the real problem is that we're not being humanitarian or actually useful enough.

While I agree the next best share-your-photo-and-or-chat app is all another sack of shit and you're a shill if you or your company is working on such an app, I don't see why or how it make sense to attack san-serif fonts, plain backgrounds, or flat buttons. Compared to the real concern that the stuff we build doesn't help our users make more money, find meaning, discover long term happiness, or really do anything other than get them addicted to wasting their time, the existence and popularity of flat buttons and thumbnail carousels just don't seem like problems at all.

Another thing, why this obsession with "saying 'fuck you' to the status quo?" This is 2014 and we're all adults (maybe), why are we still so obsessed with this rhetoric of disruption, competition, and being a general nuisance? What happened to the entrepreneur who says stuff like "Oh hey, it looks like those guys in the trucking industry have a lot down time between jobs, let me build this service to help all the trucking companies find stuff to load everywhere so they make more money." Unless you're either our RoR overlord DHH, or the latest incarnation of Dante from DMC, no one builds a successful company by saying "Fuck you" to everyone.

I am tired of seeing these takedowns of the same things with no broader structural critique. It has become a piece of groupthink now to decry the flowery language in acquisition announcements, flat design, whimsical/pointless products, greed, etc. But no examination of why things are this way, or what might change them. Disappointing.

Do you have thoughts as to why things are this way? I'd genuinely love to discuss them (and it sounds like you would too).

I'll toss in a few thoughts. Design is something that evolves over time. We're slowing working towards improving the design of the internet by taking two steps forward and one back. We build off each other, so you don't see huge changes in design overnight. This is no different than any other technology. If I raise someone in solitude, and ask them to design a car, it'll be quite primitive. Modern cars improve each year from those prior. Occasionally they misjudge, and take a step backwards, but over time, they improve. It's the same with design. If you ask someone that has no experience online to design a webpage, they'll fall short.

We keep building from what we assume is the best. If a popular site goes with flat design, it leads us to believe flat design might be attributing to their success. So, we try to follow suit with trial and error. If flat design is working for them, maybe taking it to an even more extreme and reducing all images and gradients will leave us even more successful. Or, maybe only some aspects of their flat design are contributing to their success, and it's a balance between flat and non-flat elements.

Which is best? No one knows. We'll try all the possible combinations, and gravitate towards what's successful with profits, and with users. You can't expect these changes over night. Right now designers are quite sure the future involves more minimal design. The only way to test this is to experiment with different combinations.

So, don't piss on someone because they try an extremely flat design and it fails. The only reason we know it fails is because they went out on a limb to try it out. Instead, thank them for trying, look towards any aspects of their design that did work, and improve on their failure. I can guarantee we're going to have an even better experience browsing the internet 10 years from now. It's going to happen because of many designers and developers failing, and few standing on them and succeeding.

The original purveyors of flat design were well intentioned. They based their designs on sound principles (simplicity, authenticity, mobile-first). They didn't intend to have their designs turn into a rigid style.

Other designers started to notice. People started blogging about the "flat design movement" (which didn't yet exist, but nevertheless made for a great headline). Some designers agreed with the sentiment and copied the style.

Then, nobody could deny the impact of flat design. It was everywhere.

But for every designer out there, there are hundreds of imitators. They call themselves designers, but all they know how to do is clone a certain look. They are like the skilled painters who make forgeries of famous paintings, but can't paint originals. They started copying the flat design they saw everywhere. Except they didn't understand the principles behind flat design. They used it where it was not appropriate. They took it to absurd extremes. They disregarded readability, usability, and originality in pursuit of a certain look.

So now you have the same bad design everywhere.

Design fads exist because most most web designers are really imitators. They don't tailor a solution to fit the problems. They are just good at imitating other people's solutions. And since most founders / bosses / HR people aren't designers either, the imitators get hired.

>'Do you have thoughts as to why things are this way?'

Off the top of my head, I'd think there's a lot of Apple / Steve Jobs mimicry in the use of flowery language.

Everything your local startup produces is beautiful just like everything from a new Apple store to an app, a document or a template in a WWDC keynote is beautiful and everything Apple does in general is 'incredible', 'great' and 'amazing' in their own words.

The reason is Google. Bear with me.

Ask most people to name the second largest search engine, and they'll draw a blank. Google is the alpha and omega. This means that most tech and tech-adjacent business like media is at the whims of Google's search results.

So with the modern internet, as far as consumers go, it's mostly winner-takes all. This trickles all the way through to everything else, including VC investment, "disruption", and cargo-cult design. If you're not following the current zeitgeist you're kind of left in the dark.

As for solutions, I don't think they'll come from designers. You can't ask the soldiers to just stop warring. It's a systemic problem and requires a systemic solution.

I don't see people understanding this or rallying together to combat it anytime soon, so I think it will end like most wars do. One side wins and writes the history books to make it all seem obvious in retrospect.

This is uncomfortably scathing. And true.

The part about the Icebergs acquisition is particularly depressing. We are losing the trust of consumers by constantly shutting down products. It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market).

People always talk about this and that policy stifling innovation. This practice of shutting down products after a building a user base is just as bad. Consumers (I know I feel this way) are simply not going to trust products that aren't from the big guys. That hurts the small guys. "Early adopters" don't solve everything.

> It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market)

Do they really, though? There's no shortage of acquisitions that are driven by motivations other than "these people built something useful." Such as:

"We want to hire these people whose startup is a clear failure, but they won't bite unless we give them a way to save face"

"Our VCs funded these people too, and we want to give them something resembling an exit on their terrible investment in order to keep them happy"

"Our CEO needs to demonstrate to Wall Street that he is a Dynamic Leader, which he does by buying startups more or less at random"

You're very right! I was generalizing.

I've just seen too products I use get shut down because they refuse to create sustainable businesses.

Isn't this more of the very same smarmy navel gazing bullshit OP has taken up arms against? There are plenty of designers doing meaningful work in various fields. The big red flag in this article is the implicit bullshit! Who said design is for social change? Political disruption? What if design is just making these buttons look good so 10 year olds can Snapchat more better? Whos to decide whats a real world problem and whats not?

Jeez, its gotten to the point where I balk when introducing myself as a designer.

Two quotes from OA

"if you can’t find an honest-to-goodness, human-centric, non-rich-white-person problem to solve, even if in your spare time and without financial reward, then perhaps design is not a field you should be working in."

and

"(For the record, I’d consider designing flyers for your local corner store better than what’s touted as ‘design’ in the Valley.)"

I live in a non-white area in a city a long way from the 'valley'. We have local printers who do flyers rather well. I get plenty through my door advertising everything from pizza to halal Chinese food through spiritual enlightenment.

And we have designers who are non-white as well as designers who are white, and clients who are non-white and clients who are white. There seems to be plenty of good basic communication and design going on.

Has OP read Lee McCormack's work (and not the books about bikes)?

"We follow the same worn-out, well-trodden, clichéd paths of those who came before us, over and over again, claiming to be the next best thing, when in reality we’re just the latest in a series of cookie-cutter gimmicks and frauds hoping to be validated by soulless marketplaces and rich white geriatrics like those bright-eyed, pimple-pocked stars that came before us."

Besides being a horrible, run on sentence, this is exactly how web design works.

People build the same thing over and over because that's what people BUY. If nobody bought any Toyota Camry's, then we wouldn't have millions of cars that all look the same and do the same thing. It's the same thing with web design. The people are who doing the really cool cutting edge design work are outliers - not the stuff you see a lot of in the mainstream sites who get the awards and visibility.

It's like Henry Rollins said about punk rock being dead. Actually punk is very much alive and kicking, but you won't see it on MTV, or on the music charts, or on the radio. You have to really dig to find real punk rock anymore. You can't go to the local "hipster" bar to see the local band imitating Green Day's pop-punk sound. No, you have to go to Chicago, in some dungy, hole-in-the-wall bar, and sit in the mosh pit with skinheads who haven't showered for a week, and the band comes on and belts out an hour of angry, non-conformist anthems and just oozes with anger and disenchantment. He said a lot better than I did, but you get the idea.

So yeah, good design isn't dead, you just have to did a little to find the good stuff.

So is Winnipeg.

I'm glad someone else appreciates venetian snares. :)

You can't implement a good design by committee...

Does this mean we can have buttons that look like buttons back?

I'd love that.

Edit with actual content: The number of companies that describe in glowing terms how they're moving forward by shutting down and taking all your data with them is really way too high. I think fotopedia.com is the last one I heard of, you should check out their blog post and the comments: http://blog.fotopedia.com/fotopedia-shutdown/

Mods: why can't I make a comment linking to the ourinrediblejourney tumblr? It's relevant to the "make companies just to flip them" point in the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com