

The Invisible Side of Design   - cwan
http://speakerdeck.com/u/smashingmag/p/the-invisible-side-of-design

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troymc
My favourite quote: "Some things are so well designed that we don't notice
them anymore."

Also, note the site where they shared these slides. It's not slideshare.net,
it's speakerdeck.com. It's easy to guess why they went with speakerdeck.com...
Compare to

[http://www.slideshare.net/bud_caddell/how-do-you-design-
for-...](http://www.slideshare.net/bud_caddell/how-do-you-design-for-
creativity)

~~~
woadwarrior01
IIRC, I read this (or something very similar) in Don Norman's book "The
Invisible Computer".

~~~
huhtenberg
It is a common and popular observation, so it gets mentioned in virtually
every book (or a documentary) on design.

~~~
sjwright
Unfortunately there are still too many good traditional designers (who
hopefully understand this observation) that are unskilled at interface design,
and too many good interface designers unexposed to the history of design
theory.

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nxn
I don't mind high level overviews of concepts if they manage to successfully
lead the reader to the core of the idea. However, this slideshow was not
effective at communicating anything to me. At some point during the second
half of this "presentation" each slide seemed to have some vague phrase or
sentence that was followed by 3-5 screenshots with no explanation of what the
relationship was to the context the screenshot was given in -- I started to
wonder if substituting those screenshots with random ones would have any
impact on the value of the presentation.

If anything, I think the awful slideshow "player" UI on this website did a
better job at explaining the lack of "invisible design" than the slideshow
did. I spent almost a minute trying to find a play button, because from the
look of the UI I was expecting a movie. When I hit the fast forward icon I
thought it just took me to a preview screen for another unrelated video.

I understand how that may seem like an overreaction given that we're used to
losing more time on more meaningless things, but a good UI should only take a
split second to understand.

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chanux
<off-topic>I like how the site speakerdeck.com make it simple and
amazing.</off-topic>

~~~
somebear
Ticks me off, however, that they litter the browser history with a tons of
pages, but make it impossible to use them for anything, i.e. pressing the
browser back button doesn't do anything (Chrome 14.0.835.202 on Mac OS X).

~~~
skeletonjelly
I'm a tab junkie. Everything not within the same domain typically goes into a
new tab. I know what you mean though. You would have gone nuts at that HTML5
history game

[http://www.geek.com/articles/games/first-ever-browser-
addres...](http://www.geek.com/articles/games/first-ever-browser-address-bar-
game-created-in-html-5-2011038/)

------
gregschlom
Funny how they speak about not getting stuck in the "design trends trap" while
using a slab serif font and 1px drop shadows under the text...

Interesting stuff otherwise.

~~~
huhtenberg
What would you rather have him use? Papyrus? :) And 1px drop shadow is there
for contrast to improve legibility of light on bright, not because it's
trendy.

~~~
sjwright
> Papyrus?

Trajan!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t87QKdOJNv8>

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notatoad
repeatable "inspirations", design trends, and cliches all seem like a bad
thing when you talk about it from a pure design perspective. but that is the
primary difference between print and web design. web design is not just about
making something look pretty, you are designing a user interface. and the most
important thing in UI design is to use recognizable widgets, so that users
know what to do and what to expect without any instruction or learning
process. your awesome organic and original design might look great, but if
people can't figure out how to use it it's all for nothing.

i think it's telling that the first few examples of "good" design are all non-
interactive.

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phzbOx
Talking about not being _too much_ inspired by others, I'd love to know what
colours were used all over these slides. This blue background is beautiful,
add to that the cute green and white text..

~~~
sjwright
> I'd love to know what colours were used all over these slides.

#1F282D, #F1F399, #BE4B14, #0164C9, #229214, plus a curious smattering of
#FFFFFF and #000000.

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TechnoFou
I think it serves a great purposes; clearing out some myths about design.
There are too many people right now believing design is nothing more then
beauty. It's about form and function which beauty follows when designed
correctly - not the inverse.

A great presentation to keep, always useful!

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chubs
Anyone know what software he used to create the slides? They're beautiful, and
i'm 100% sure he didn't use powerpoint!

~~~
mortenjorck
Actually, I'd say it's entirely possible he used PowerPoint. A lot of
designers will simply prepare their slides in a design-focused app such as
Illustrator and then export them as images to the presentation app.

~~~
chubs
Wow, that sounds painstaking. Although you're probably right, you'd need to be
working in something like illustrator to get results that look that nice.

~~~
nchlswu
I think you'd be surprised. The latest PowerPoint versions are surprisingly
powerful. Duarte Design did some work with it to demonstrate it's power.

However, I would acknowledge that it's painstaking to make a deck that pretty
because some of the elements like fonts are not built in and PowerPoint's
interface doesn't necessarily make it straightforward to change the elements
that make this deck stand out to you.

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CubicleNinjas
This presentation sumaries the capstones of design nicely.

One point I wildly disagree with: That design is not nearly half cultural
pulse. To ignore the very real pull of culture, and to do your own take on it,
is to build unsellable design. Moreover, customers hear this cultural
leitmotif and respond because they get the reference. This is the true balance
of great designers. Finding their part in the chorus.

Imagine we're talking about clothing design. It is a large formal event, a
wedding or professional conference. Everyone wears the same thing out respect
for the idea. If someone were to come in with a red tuxedo it may excite a
few, but the last thing you'd call them was a creative visionary. Moreover,
this event requires pants - and to not do so is bad news.

~~~
spitfire
"Imagine we're talking about clothing design. It is a large formal event, a
wedding or professional conference. Everyone wears the same thing out respect
for the idea. If someone were to come in with a red tuxedo it may excite a
few, but the last thing you'd call them was a creative visionary. Moreover,
this event requires pants - and to not do so is bad news."

Well, unless you're Karl Lagerfeld.

