
A Call to All UI Designers: Do Not Play Skype’s Game - jorde
http://kaishinlab.com/no-to-skype-competition/
======
pixelbath
As a designer, these pieces come off to me as whiny. I have a difficult time
picturing why a designer would sit there angry at a company for crowdsourcing
a design.

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.

~~~
kaishin
_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_ << This is exactly why I wrote the
article. You guys are talking money, I am talking ethics.

~~~
pixelbath
Fair enough, but I do think it's pretty presumptuous of you to speak for an
entire industry. I do not think it is unethical, as long as the terms are
clearly laid out beforehand.

~~~
kaishin
Sure, I might have gone overboard, but the basic idea is still the same: That
thing needs serious design thinking, not patchwork.

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.

------
joblessjunkie
You are trapped in the same Hell as other creative types, such as musicians:
there are countless young aspirants who are willing to do this work for free
just for a shot at "making it", but precious few people who sign checks who
are able to discriminate the quality of the work.

Engineering and accounting, your two comparison fields, don't suffer this
problem.

~~~
raganwald
Engineering, accounting, and other +regulated+ fields use social engineering
to solve the problem of how to be paid handsomely. What they have done is
convince society that there should only be a limited number of engineers and
accountants, those that are highly trained and have passed rigorous
examinations. The imbalance of supply and demand takes care of the rest.

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.

~~~
joblessjunkie
I'm not sure if you are just trying to make a supplemental point, but this
isn't really where I was going.

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.

~~~
kaishin
Allow me to chime in, UI design is as methodical as engineering and
accounting. There are quantitative and qualitative methods to build and
evaluate interfaces. Maybe you are referring to aesthetics, but that's only a
fraction of what an interface is...

~~~
danenania
There may be metrics available, but it's an inherently fuzzy proposition to
say a design 'works' or 'doesn't work'. For developers, once features are
pinned down, there are much clearer criteria for success--a feature either
works as described without errors or it doesn't. Most of the subjectivity that
developers deal with is actually related to design.

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.

------
larrik
Am I the only one who thinks there's way too much similarity between the the
RIAA's "Save the artists" screeching, and the "design industry's" "Save the
artists" screeching?

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)

~~~
tseabrooks
This was kind of my thinking regarding sites like eLance and 99designs. When I
first saw them I thought they were a great way to connect with designers that
have more modest salary expectations. Though there are a handful of problems
with these services, you just have to decide if the problems are worth the
savings.

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.

~~~
justinph
As a designer, when an org comes to me and says "we have $[laughably small
amount] to spend on this website", I point them to WooThemes and tell them to
pick one out. I'm happy to sit down with them for a few hours and do some
basic work, but put the burden on them. It works great for me, because I get
to do a little design education, still get paid, and focus my time on more
lucrative projects. It also can pay dividends when clients come back to me
later for more work or other design changes.

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.

~~~
ladon86
Why don't you make your own little stable of design templates and sell them to
these pain-in-the-ass clients on a non-exclusive basis?

Later on you can charge more if they want it personalised.

------
raganwald
The question of free or cheap is important, but not why I would not submit a
design to a competition like this. (I'm not a "designer," so what follows are
simply general remarks about my personal experience with things like this.)

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.

~~~
mcritz
The assumption that too many people are making is that design is just that
last thing to be welded on in the assembly line. Design isn’t just a product,
it’s also a process.

~~~
raganwald
It does not surprise me in the least that the people who produced the Skype 5
"design" also treat design as something to be welded on at the end of the
assembly line.

 _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.

~~~
ThomPete
I happen to know the guys who designed Skype for Mac.

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.

~~~
raganwald
I'm delighted to hear that. It is restores my faith in our profession to know
that there is a process in place and that the final result reflects the forces
and contraints in place.

+1!

~~~
ThomPete
They guys that did Skype was 8020studio.com probably on of the best design
agencies in the world if you ask me.

~~~
raganwald
And I hope this actually reinforces the point I made. If it looks to me like
this did not take place, it is because I obviously don't understand the forces
and constraints upon the solution. Perhaps I don't fully understand the
problem they are trying to solve.

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.

~~~
ThomPete
Well let me give you a pointer on what and for who they are solving problems.

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?"

~~~
lkozma
"95% of all messages are. "Can I call you?"

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.

~~~
ThomPete
Sure but even if it was only 70% or 80% it would still be important.

------
benologist
A Call to All UI Designers: You're being disrupted.

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.

~~~
bad_user
This "disruption" you're speaking of has been going on ever since the
nineties, when the web became popular.

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?

------
olalonde
This post is nothing more than propaganda to protect established designers
from competition (those who are starting out or are just not very good at
marketing their skills). Perhaps this was not the author's intention but it is
the consequence of his reasoning. I don't think many designer want their
profession to be protected by a trade union and this kind of mentality is what
leads to it.

I say, if you are not an established designer with a large base of clients, do
participate in the contest!

~~~
radley
I'm a very experienced designer. This has nothing to do with competition
_(seriously, if a contest can unravel me then I'm not really a professional)._

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?

~~~
olalonde
This has nothing to do with competition? That's not what I get from this
sentence:

    
    
        keep in mind that you are *betraying the design community*, 
        and that *might harm you as designer* in the long run.
    

That actually sounds like a threat to me.

~~~
kaishin
I didn't meant to threaten anyone in my article. It's just a way to draw
attention to the seriousness of the matter. As a matter of fact I couldn't
care less if there are any people who enter the contest. They are amateurs and
and they will stay so until they take their profession more seriously.

~~~
pixelbath
You don't care at all if anyone enters the contest, yet felt the need to write
this incendiary piece that calls on _all_ designers (which you now deride as
"amateur") not to enter this contest? You then further go on to suggest that
an entrant's credibility/integrity would be compromised by doing so.

So, which is it?

~~~
kaishin
What I said reflects solely my opinion on the people who enter the contest. As
far as I am concerned, anyone who takes UI design seriously wouldn't bother
doing so... Again, I am not expecting you to agree.

------
showerst
What we do, as UI/UX people, _will_ become a commodity. It's already happened
with design and simple web programming, but the quality is very poor right
now. Basic economics suggests that it _will_ improve.

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 =)

------
rgbrgb
Or you could redesign Skype and probably get a job out of it or at least an
amazing project to put in your portfolio. This is a huge opportunity for
anyone trying to break into the business - college kids, amateur designers,
the unestablished.

~~~
codingthebeach
Completely agree, this author apparently, potentially, lives in a sort of
cloud society where every designer is paid handsomely for his work and you
don't have to scrape and beg and plead and bleed and tactically position
yourself in order to make it. A winning Skype redesign would be life-changing
for anybody with the time to submit to such a contest, by definition.

------
gavinballard
I agree with the author's overall thrust: that the new Skype UI for Mac is
horrid and that a large company with lots of cash should generally pay
quality, full-time designers who can spend a lot of time understanding the
product and producing an interface that gels with the user.

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.

~~~
lkozma
It's the usual lemon market argument though: clients can't discern quality
reliably so they go for price only, which drives quality out of the market.

------
efields
You know what 99designers can't do? They can't visit your clients' offices.
They can't justify their decisions in realtime. They can't 'sell' their design
beyond simply clicking 'upload.' Basically, they can't be convincing to the
people who hold the purse strings.

But you can. That's your job. You're a designer.

------
kaishin
Hi all,

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,

------
famousactress
Meh. I think asking (especially young) designers to consider the value of
their work before giving it away is a reasonable thing.. but to try to pseudo-
unionize to prevent this from happening is silly.

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.

------
Terretta
From the article:

> _There is no way in hell any company would launch an engineering or
> accounting competition._

Ahem: <http://www.netflixprize.com/>

~~~
kaishin
Everyone seems to be pointing in the article to the Netflix prize, but hey,
don't take my phrase word for word. That's actually an exception that confirms
the rule... What I meant is that spec work in design is being tolerated by
both companies and designers more than any other field...

~~~
metageek
> _don't take my phrase word for word_

Say what you mean.

~~~
kaishin
My message is clear. You are free to disagree, just don't feel the need to
bring down my piece sentence by sentence...

------
moeffju
Why does nobody mention that this competition is for "chat styles"? That the
content of the chat window is the only part of the new oh-so-awful Skype 5 for
Mac that you can change with custom "styles", and that no matter how good the
UI/UX designer, they can not fix any of the perceived problems with the Skype
5 UI by creating a "chat style"?

~~~
aridiculous
True. If they're looking for a great UI designer/design, and not just a
photoshop job, they have to give the UI person access to the product flow
decision-making.

------
mgkimsal
Caution: wild stab in the dark here.

"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.

------
radley
Rather than putting time and effort into a "contest", these designers could be
doing something more constructive like contributing to open-source projects.

------
mcritz
It’s worth rereading what Mike Montiero wrote about the new Gap Logo.

[http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/dear_gap_i_have_your_ne...](http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/dear_gap_i_have_your_new_logo.php)

------
symptic
This game is for a young or unknown designer. It's their chance to establish
themselves and build their portfolio. As a professional who makes a living in
design, you are not obligated to compete. Though, you are still invited.

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?

------
redler
Skype's user experience designers -- assuming they have any -- finally have
management's answer to the age old question. Yes, you are indeed chopped
liver.

------
dfischer
All I could think of was Heroku's blog being ripped when reading this.

------
bonch
"Such Design competitions are a disguised form of crowdsourcing, and are
extremely insulting to the design profession."

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.

~~~
kaishin
I do not run a design firm. I am just a no-name freelance designer who loves
his job. If you think that I wrote the article because I am concerned about
paying my bills, then you completely missed the point.

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" ...

------
alsomike
As a designer, I'm not very concerned about spec work. The wide availability
of cheap desktop publishing software could have made design as a profession
vanish because it gave people the ability to do it themselves.

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.

